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PRACTICAL 
OCCULTISM 



BY 



WALTER WINSTON KENILWORTH 




BOSTON 
RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 



Copyright, 1921, by Richard G. Badger 



All Rights Reserved 



& 



\C$ 



Made in the United States of America 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



APR 13 1921 
©CU611703 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Apropos the Occult 7 

Practical Occultism . .10 

The Philosophical Ideal 10 

The Mental Ideal and Psychic Control . . . .15 

The Emotional Ideal 23 

Psychic Development 24 

The Nervous System 25 

Interaction of Mind and Nerves 36 

The Mind 39 

Psychic Development and Mental Therapeutics . . 48 

Psychic Suggestions 70 

The Science and Secret of Hypnotism .... 103 

The Development of Hypnotism 107 

The Methods of Hypnotic Therapeutics . . .115 

Physio-Psychical Conditions 116 

The Drift of the New Psychology 120 

Clairvoyance 122 

Auras and Influences 130 

Fate and Astrology 136 

Karma 147 

The Ways of Karma 156 

The Spiritual Perception 162 

Business and Concentration 177 

3 



4 Contents 

PAGE 

Self-Education . . 185 ' 

Changing Your Environment 193 | 

Impressions and Intuitions 205 t 

Comments on the Philosophy of Good and Evil . . 214 { 

Philosophical Reflections on the Nature of Reality . 222 

Deeper Meanings . ... 249 

The Divinity of the Soul . . 265 

The Highest Ideal 278 

The Higher Call and Response . . . . . 287 

Racial Disturbances and Self-Expression . . . 290 

The Higher Self 293 

Concerning the Eternal Omnipresent Self . . . 298 



PRACTICAL OCCULTISM 



PRACTICAL OCCULTISM 

APROPOS THE OCCULT 

We cannot revert our minds these days, but 
we hear of the occult. Occultism, in various 
forms, is becoming in a tremendous and may be 
dangerous sense the fad of the world. The dan- 
ger is evident in the important fact that the occult 
is so glibly handled by those who know it 
so little. There are those even like a child, 
ignorantly playing with fire, employ occultism for 
commercial and selfish purposes, and hourly curse 
themselves through the law of reflection. They 
invariably become neurasthenic. 

Occultism, in no sense, signifies the tinkling of 
astral bells, the gibberings of earthbound souls, 
and similar mob-attracting phenomena. The 
greatest occultist is the greatest child ; the greatest 
occult vision, the vision of the spirit; the greatest 
occult deed and rarest, the unselfish deed. Thrice 
blessed by the Karmic Deities are such who, in 
unison with the True White Brotherhood, per- 
form the simplest act of kindness, and employ 

frl 



8 Practical Occultism 

the higher senses and the soul-faculties in a sim- 
ple, humble spirit for the benefit of the fellow- 
man. 

The Samana Gotama, the Buddha, told his 
Arhats and chelas never to perplex themselves 
concerning four certain truths : one of these truths 
was relative to the psychological powers which 
evolve with soul-development. Another great 
teacher, Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna, instructed 
his disciples that psychological phenomena, in 
themselves, had a tendency to lead the seeker 
after Truth in vaingloriousness from the noble 
path leading to the goal. It is related that, on a 
certain occasion, when a disciple said: "Master, 
I have acquired the power to read the human 
heart," he replied: "Shame on thee, boy, for fol- 
lowing such practices." The learned Swamije 
Vivekananda, who so ably taught the philosophy 
of the Vedanta in this country and Europe, and 
was a disciple of Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna, ex- 
plained in a simple manner in his "Raja Yoga" 
those truths of psychology known to India for 
countless generations. His book was the result 
of the abnormal curiosity concerning the occult 
he found rampant in this land. Personally he 
never countenanced its practices. His religious 
aim was higher. Yet, it is said of him, when a 



Apropos the Occult 9 

Chicago millionaire ridiculingly insisted that he 
display occult powers, he simply looked in the 
man's eyes. Later the man declared: "In that 
look, I felt as if my entire life lay like an open 
book before the swami." 

India, that land of enchantment and magic, has 
produced also those sages who advised the people 
to turn their gaze from occult distractions to the 
vision of the Self and the Eternal. 



PRACTICAL OCCULTISM 

The Philosophical Ideal 

Practical occultism is a method of realizing the 
deeper psychological and spiritual life potentially 
existent within every creature, and which bears a 
practical significance to the daily experience of 
ordinary life. Higher truth, vision and life are 
not only for the great and eventful occasion ; they 
should as well serve in every moment, even the 
most commonplace; for it is only as the psycho- 
logical life becomes the normal every-day life that 
the path can be trodden and the goal finally 
reached. Above all, to understand such a prac- 
tical view of occultism we must get away from 
the obsolete, perverted conception of occultism 
which obtained in those earlier days when inter- 
pretation of the occult had its first apostolate in 
the Blavatsky coterie. With the coming of 
Oriental philosophers and psychologists to this 
country, and with the efforts of scientific investi- 
gators such as Muller, Carus, Rhys-Davids, 
Oldenburg and others, a higher understanding of 

10 



Practical Occultism 1 1 

the truly occult was given expression. The 
"sham" side, the element of the ominous and of 
the mystery-mongering, was divested of its mean- 
ing and influence and for it was substituted that 
religio-psychological definition which is to-day 
accepted by leading thinkers. 

Occultism is the modern revelation and sym- 
bolism of an ancient and well-guarded system of 
psychological philosophy involving a knowledge 
of psychology in comparison with which our mod- 
ern psychology is relatively less fundamental. 
Occultism finds its greatest significance in the 
attainment of self-knowledge, that attainment 
which was suggested by the Greek of Pre-Socratic 
times. This self-knowledge is not merely a meta- 
physical conception of the nature of man. It 
has nothing to do with philosophy, for it is purely 
psychological. It is a psychical discovery of the 
essence and action of the mind and the control and 
direction of the will in relation to it. 

The mind is usually considered either as an in- 
tangible abstract something having a nominal 
existence while its real existence is confused with 
the physical brain. There are even those who 
think themselves enlightened who persist in such 
a view. They speak of all thought as inseparably 
dependent upon the action of the molecules of the 
brain and the condition of the nerve centers. To 



12 Practical Occultism 

them thought is but a secretion of the brain. This 
opinion is of little importance apart from a 
philosophical sense, but, in the light of any system 
of metaphysical speculation, it becomes a divid- 
ing line between the materialistic and spiritual 
thought. 

The average person accustomed, to viewing the 
external perceptible universe as the solely existent 
accords to it a greater reality than to his personal 
self. The visible and the tangible are alone real 
to him. The personal self is regarded as a 
shadowy reflection of the actual, external world. 
Naturally, his relation in conduct to such a theory 
is expressive of the material attitude taken. It is 
necessary to discuss the philosophical side of oc- 
cultism because this is of singular importance and 
because it is by it alone that occultism can be 
understood and put into practice. So long as man 
believes himself to be identified with the outer 
world, so long as he believes he is under its pro- 
vision and control, so long as he disbelieves in 
the superior reality of himself, so long will he re- 
main ignorant of the occult and unaware of the 
great blessings and power which such knowledge 
imparts. 

In all activity the mind finds that it stands 
apart from the world of phenomena. The per- 
cipient self is distinct from the perceptible world. 



Practical Occultism 13 

Occult teaching distinguishes and emphasizes the 
comparative reality of the two and gives a per- 
manence and reality to the percipient self that it 
denies to the phenomena perceived by the self. 
In Western thought the exact opposite position 
has been maintained. The external sense-world 
has been considered the sole reality, if not in 
theory, at least in practice. The soul has received 
only a quasi-importance. This extremely narrow 
conception has marked its influence upon Western 
religious sentiment so that, to the Western mind, 
the soul, after it has separated from the body, is 
definable only as something rather vaporous, airy 
and abstract than real, and of more importance 
and more vitally existent than the physical body 
which was its instrument of expression during the 
physical life. This has made the after-death 
states of Christian conception so ridiculously 
physical. The conception drawn in vital contrast 
to the reality of sense experiences, gives man a 
purely physical heaven and a purely sense life. 

This dual conception of reality, of life and soul 
is of vast occult meaning. If there is more of 
concreteness to the outward arrangement of 
things, then the inner soul has a relative existence 
and importance in comparison with the practical 
matter-of-fact circumstances we find in the world 
of physical association. It becomes, as it were, 



14 Practical Occultism 

subjected to the more real outward world and is 
hopelessly controlled by it. 

Occultism begins by affirming the existence of 
the soul and asserts that it possesses a deep reality 
and a permanence of life that cannot be ascribed 
to anything different from itself. This being true, 
the soul is free, free to express the latent divinity, 
omniscience, power and bliss which form its 
essence and true self. It will be unhampered to 
inaugurate a spirit of self-control by which, in 
turn, it will learn, little by little, to control the 
outward condition of things. In this lies all the 
1 disputation of occultism. 

Occultism is the word used to designate the 
evolution of those powers and that attenuation of 
the moral consciousness which develop with the 
growth of self-control and self-regulation, which 
develop with the quest of Truth and the recog- 
nition and the assertion of the spiritual and of the 
superiority of the mind over anything with which 
it may come into contact. By controlling the 
lower self by the higher we control the substance 
and the life-force which composes the lower 
nature within. By controlling this substance and 
life-force we control Nature itself, which moves 
under the same law and is composed of the same 
substance and force of which the ego itself is 
composed. 



Practical Occultism 15 

The Mental Ideal and Psychic Control 

Since the birth of the human instincts the 
majority of men have been concerned with what 
happened outside of them. They have payed 
attention to the forms, events, circumstances and 
conditions which come under the heading of phe- 
nomenal existence. Rarely did anyone make 
effort to discover the mind which all these 
material things affected and which, in turn, had 
their meaning and existence through its percep- 
tion. The Upanishads say it is in the nature of 
the mind to peer out into the world of the senses. 
It projects itself and the senses upon the phe- 
nomenal world and, once this projection has taken 
place, it becomes a fixed habit. The mind, actu- 
ated by external impress, throws itself about the 
cause of the impress and occupies itself solely with 
what it has covered, little heeding the fact that it 
itself is all that it perceives, that what it perceives 
is only a mode of self-manifestation. It pays no 
attention to the working processes which produce 
the manifestation. It does not consider the mind 
itself. It considers only that which is the symbol 
of its activity. 

Wise men, however, seeking self-knowledge 
and immortality, have turned the mind upon itself 
and therein found truths from which religion was 



1 6 Practical Occultism 

born and the higher philosophy, from which were 
born those spiritual perceptions and psychological 
powers which are having their initiative develop- 
ment in our modern clairvoyance and clairaudi- 
ence. This is the central fact in all occultism — 
the centralization of the mind upon itself. This 
can be accomplished, however, only when the 
mind has changed from that shiftless, crowded 
condition which accentuates its normal activity 
and when it has developed a condition of self- 
possession, reflection and repose which manifests 
in concentrated attention. It must be allowed to 
fix itself upon one thing alone, that of self- 
discovery. Other foreign strains of thought and 
feeling must be ejected, so that the mind remains 
absolutely and wholly busied with the task set 
before it. 

The soul of the mind is the only illuminative 
power in the entire universe. It spreads its light 
over objects and interprets and names the phe- 
nomenal universe accordingly as its light casts 
its varied brilliance and power, and accordingly 
as its brilliance on some things contrasts with the 
shadows its brilliance varies. It being the only 
light, it is only by the mind that the mind can be 
known, its field of activity explored, its past 
changed into different characteristics, its present 
ameliorated, its future specifically determined. 



Practical Occultism 17 

When the mind sheds the brilliance that it imparts 
to the external world on its own inner self, 
then comes illumination and knowledge which 
transcends the knowledge of the limited and of 
the average person busied with what concerns the . 
body. 

One of the main factors in the leading to this 
self-illumination through the illumination of the 
mind is the fixedness of the mind as to the con- 
viction that it possesses the power of reflection, 
of throwing itself upon itself. This conviction 
may come in several ways, but more particularly 
by the invocation of psychic processes, then, too, 
by philosophical meditation and discrimination. 
These latter enable a man to determine what 
reality is. He denies reality to this and to that 
until he at last reaches the soul and, finding it 
immovable, imperishable and deathless, accords 
reality to it. By the continued practice of such 
meditation the mind becomes fixed as to the prin- 
ciple of reality. It has made effort to discover 
reality in the phenomenal universe and discovered 
that it could not be found in the fluctuations and 
indecisions and complexities of matter. For the 
real is changeless, established and simple. The 
mind searches in its own depth by repeated con- 
centration and finds that it, too, is changeable, 
susceptible to the variations of mental influences, 



1 8 Practical Occultism 

that it, too, is complex and unestablished. Finally 
the mind, by insistent self-contemplation, reaches 
the last path where mentality itself manifests, 
reaches beyond mentality, beyond itself, and finds 
that beyond itself is the Purusha, the everlasting 
soul which has been confused with the mind, even 
as the mind had confused itself with the material 
limitations of Nature. There it recognizes 
reality, and the mind filled to its depth with the 
idea merges itself with the soul. It drops off into 
the ocean of universal matter and force all those 
things which constituted its bodily or mental for- 
mation, and attains unto that which is unknowable 
by finite mind, indescribable and supremely bliss- 
ful. 

This contemplation correspondingly involves 
deep psychological states, states beyond the nor- 
mal, those supernormal states which are feebly 
suggested by trance and ecstasy. It requires self- 
estrangement from all those circumstances and 
conditions which can, in any way, disturb the 
peace and equanimity of mind so necessary for 
concentration of mind. One cannot be busied 
about the myriad cares of social and business life 
and, at the same time, centralize his mind upon 
the finalities of existence. For this reason have 
the sages retired into the silent places so as to 
\e apart from the usual crowded situations of 



Practical Occultism 19 

worldly experience. Not only is this applicable 
to spiritual contemplation, but to contemplation 
of any kind. Haeckel could not have written his 
master-works unless he had the peace of his 
Italian villa to assist in setting aside the distrac- 
tions of the outer world. 

Incidentally this contemplation leads to 
abstraction of the mind, so that it becomes un- 
aware of what may be happening about it. It is 
so occupied with its ideal that it impersonates it. 
This contemplation may, not at first, be directed 
toward the high ideal of self-knowledge and self- 
liberation. Of course that is the goal, but there 
are numberless psychological states intermediate. 
As an example, concentration on any subject 
whatsoever will, if persisted in, turn the mind into 
self-reflection and it will find itself on another 
plane of existence to which its fixedness of 
thought has carried it. As soon as one becomes 
too concentrated, he loses sense perception on this 
plane and finds himself sensibly percipient on 
another plane, the psychic plane in which reside 
disincarnate human intelligences. Further ab- 
straction carries the thinker beyond this plane and 
beyond and beyond until the highest planes in 
the universe are reached. Such contemplation is 
the secret of that spiritual ecstasy of which so 
much is heard in the Roman Catholic Church. 



20 Practical Occultism 

Any number of instances are recorded where 
saints, rapt in devotional contemplation, were 
translated beyond the normal, human plane into 
the presence of disincarnate teachers living on in- 
comparably higher planes. We need only men- 
tion that paragon of philosophers, Saint Thomas 
Aquinas, Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Cath- 
erine of Sienna, Saint Paul and others to assure 
ourselves of these things. Then the Orient fur- 
nishes us with any number of examples. Yet, it 
does not require devotional contemplation to be- 
come psychically percipient. The seances of 
spiritualism afford ample examples, examples 
which are indisputably true. All spiritualistic 
"sittings" involve the concentration of those who 
believe in the phenomena. In assisting this con- 
centrating, singing is frequently employed. 

Apart from the fact that contemplation shifts 
consciousness from this to the immediately 
superior and to higher and higher planes, it also 
imparts unusual power of self-control and control 
over the forces in Nature. The methods em- 
ployed in this contemplation have been synthe- 
sized by the Orientals and classified into one 
grand science — Raja Yoga. But Raja Yoga with 
all its accomplishments and attainments has its 
initial basis in ordinary self-control. Each effort 
at self-control is an effort at control of the mind, 
for all moral uncertainties proceed from the mind 



Practical Occultism 21 

and, placed under submission, places so much of 
the mind itself under control of the will. That is 
the goal in the psychic portion of contemplation, 
the education and supremacy of the will over all 
mental states. When this has become fixed there 
will be no vacillation of the mind. What it de- 
cides upon that will it accomplish. And its desires 
will not any longer be whimsical and indeter- 
minate. They will have been educated through 
the higher understanding which deep thought 
gives. 

To the outward senses all things in the universe 
are composed of solid, concrete substances, but 
chemistry tells us that even the most impenetrably 
hardened substances are in a perpetual state of 
flux. No matter how concrete the substance, it is 
composed of finer and finer substances until at 
length the substances become so fine that they are 
identical with thought and mind-stuff, which is 
only a highly attenuated form of matter. Now, 
if the initiate has once learned self-control, has 
once learned to regulate and govern his thoughts, 
determining how long they shall endure or if they 
shall affect him whatever, he has also learned 
how to control those finer physical substances 
which are the same as thought. And, controlling 
the finer states of any object, he controls that 
object itself. This is the explanation of those 
miraculous occurrences we read in Biblical and 



22 Practical Occultism 

ecclesiastical accounts. The body is under control 
of the mind and can be regulated to each and 
every separate muscle and nerve. Call to mind 
such persons whom you may know who have the 
faculty of stopping perceptible beating of the 
heart, or such who control the breath-forces that 
they can stop breathing, and so forth. All such 
feats are accomplished by the mind and lend ex- 
planation to those more marvelous feats of levita- 
tion and materialization which have puzzled the 
most advanced of our scientists. 

Furthered contemplation, familiarizing the 
mind with the psychic plane, develops and special- 
izes the psychic senses. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously all psychics employ these higher senses 
when they see or hear things at a distance. With 
highly developed souls not only is sight and hear- 
ing evolved, but also tactual sense. They can 
exteriorize the tactual sense, and lift and touch 
things physically separate from themselves. This 
has been frequently attested to. 

The methods of psychic control will also induce 
these faculties. If one lives on a cereal diet for 
any length of time, his senses will become evolved 
into psychic perception. Hypnotism and other 
psychic states will similarly invoke the unfoldment 
of these higher senses. 

These truths are a deviation, however, from the 



Practical Occultism 23 

primary purposes of practical occultism which 
seeks to educate not the psychic as much as the 
spiritual senses and intuitions. The goal will not 
be reached until the mind has discarded the vani- 
ties of psychic evolution as being of importance 
in themselves. They are only of importance as 
they assist the soul in finding its true nature and 
essence. 

The Emotional Ideal 

It is the emotional ideal which is alone signifi- 
cant. As the soul grows in the attainment of 
greater power, glory and wisdom, the greater 
does its sympathy become, the greater its love. 
It possesses power, but what, it asks, shall it do 
with power? To use it would mean to emphasize 
the personal and selfish. That is, to use it out of 
vaingloriousness of heart. Using it for the best 
interests is alone a reason for its operation. 

Love and sympathy are the goal of all prac- 
tical occultism and psychic effort. And initiating 
these virtues into our lives we may arrive at the 
greatest heights of occult development, even if we 
are ignorant of those particular psychic methods 
which develop the psychic senses. 



PSYCHIC DEVELOPMENT 

The literature concerning the occult is sat- 
urated with ideas of psychic development, par- 
ticularly these days when so much attention is 
directed to the psychic element in human nature. 
With one or two exceptions, however, the vari- 
ously presented systems are unintelligible in the 
light of the higher occultism and the new psy- 
chology, and those who are persuaded of these 
systems are actuated more by a belief than by any 
direct occult perception. There are many phases 
of psychic development which, if scientifically 
furthered, require a deep understanding of the 
latest developed scientific conclusions, and with- 
out this understanding the practitioner of psychic 
methods is liable to ramifications of psycho- 
physical disorder, for if the development is under- 
taken in any uncertainty, there is most imminent 
danger of mental eccentricities, if not insanities. 

Psychic development, as it is modernly inter- 
preted, is an effort on the part of an individual to 
widen the area of consciousness and to develop 
the faculties and intuitions of the subjective mind 

24 



Psychic Development 25 

with its suggestions of indefinite unfoldment of 
the nature and power and divinity of the soul. 
The modes by which this development is accom- 
plished are both physical and psychical. They in- 
volve the immediate development of those ele- 
ments in the human body which, when aroused 
into special activity and into a higher condition, 
are suitable physical conduits for the expression 
of the psychic faculties potential even in the most 
primitive type. Among these elements are in- 
cluded the nervous and respiratory systems, 
especially as by these two almost the entire activi- 
ties of the human body are carried on, either in a 
principal or secondary fashion. The psychical 
modes involved in the development are the in- 
creased specialization of the faculties of normal 
consciousness, such as the will and the concentra- 
tive faculty, which in turn evolve themselves into 
the higher activities of the supernormal conscious- 
ness with its possibilities of intuition and their 
manifestation. These have been the fundamental 
requisites of all systems and cults which empha- 
size the theory of psychic development. 

The Nervous System 

The cardinal principle, according to the oc- 
cultists, in the development of the psychic con- 



26 Practical Occultism 

sciousness is the expansion of the nervous system 
in susceptibility to vibration. They assert that 
as all of the physical motions, such as light and 
heat, are conveyed to the mind through the action 
of the nervous system, so psychic vibrations, 
which are physical vibrations only acting beyond 
the normal sensitiveness, can likewise be trans- 
lated through the nervous system if it be de- 
veloped and its impressionableness heightened. 
Then they claim the possibilities of sense percep- 
tion would be increased, allowing us to see and 
hear and feel beyond the point of normal sight, 
hearing and feeling. They term this develop- 
ment accordingly clairvoyance, clairaudience and 
the clair-intuitional senses. In this light much 
of the dreamy, vague and imperfect attitudes of 
occultism are dispensed with, and we understand 
psychic development to be a scientific conception 
of the specialization and the indefiniteness of 
specialization of the normal senses. It might be 
provisionally added that, in the terminology of 
the occult sciences, the essence of all sense con- 
sciousness is psychic. Our normal sense faculties 
are really psychic faculties retarded in more per- 
fect expression by the inhibitions of the gross 
material body. Thus clairvoyance is not some- 
thing essentially different from ordinary sight; it 
is simply an elaboration of it, simply a develop- 



Psychic Development 27 

ment in the degree. By confusing clairvoyance 
and ordinary sight as two separate conditions has 
arisen most of the misunderstanding. If we 
should do away with the occult expressions and, 
in their stead, speak of "increased sight," or 
"psychic sight," it might be preferable. 

The nervous system, therefore, being the prac- 
tical, tangible, concrete, physical working basis 
for the development of potential psychic facul- 
ties, every special attention should be given it. In 
the light of recent scientific speculation the 
nervous system is a highly complex structure of 
minor systems of nerve parts. It is a complexity 
of complex nerve tissues of the most delicate fiber 
and sensitiveness. Its development has taken un- 
thinkable aeons. In far-distant periods of time, 
at the very dawn of the evolutionary tendencies 
toward the formation of the human body, the 
nervous system was indefinitely simpler, even 
different in the extreme from what it is at present. 
The reason for this was that the subconscious 
mind of the species was still in potential develop- 
ment, and that the automatic activities now defi- 
nitely carried on by the nervous system in an 
unconscious manner were for the greater part 
carried on consciously. In other words, our 
primordial ancestors were as aware of what was 
going on at their centers as at their periphery. 



28 Practical Occultism 

But in the struggle for existence and in the attack 
and in self-defence, in its methods of procuring 
subsistence, and so forth, the consciousness of 
the animal was gradually and more and more 
fixedly centered at what was occurring at the 
outermost tangents of its physical life. In the 
ages of evolution this condition became more and 
more decided. Meanwhile the digestive, repro- 
ductive, respiratory and circulatory activities 
which were previously carried on consciously by 
ancestral life were gradually given over to an 
automatic development which performed the cen- 
tral duties with as active a diligence as was per- 
formed by the animal in full consciousness when, 
as previously stated, it was equally aware of what 
was going on both at its periphery and at its 
center. This automatic development in the un- 
foldment became what in the higher species is the 
nervous system. Herein lies the peculiar truth 
which shall be reviewed in a later article — the 
fact that psychic development, though not often 
considered in that sense, has also to do with the 
projection of normal consciousness into that phase 
of mind known as the subconscious which regu- 
lates the major portion of our body. The Raja 
and Hatha Yogis of the Orient claim that this can 
be readily accomplished, and that when once it is 
accomplished the entire "I" is conscious in the 



Psychic Development 29 

completeness, and that bodily and psychic dis- 
tresses are forever banished. Mind, body and 
subjective self are in equal vision before the all- 
evolved consciousness. 

As the development of the nervous system 
proceeded through the various stages of inferior 
human forms, greater and greater coherency and 
heterogenity of life became visible. Yet the dis- 
tinction between ourselves and man of the ter- 
tiary period is incomparable, so accomplished has 
been the unfoldment of the activity of the nerves. 
And the neolithic man, the crude savage, unim- 
paired by the thousand fold nerve pressure of 
our heightened civilization, our acquired neces- 
sities, stimulated desires and their satieties, 
possessed only a semi-complex system limiting the 
sphere of consciousness to the narrower and more 
primitive forms of living, of thought and of feel- 
ing. Gradually in long lapses of time and in in- 
creased intricacy of life, the nervous system de- 
veloped its potentialities into their present state. 
Each fiber, each nerve part of the system repre- 
sents a link in the concrete consciousness of the 
sense and reflex mental experiences of the race's 
ancestry, whether immediate or in the remote 
beginnings of life, and in every genesis the 
totality of these subconscious experiences are 
hereditarily evolved in a manner as equally mys- 



30 Practical Occultism 

terious as paternal and ante-paternal characteris- 
tics and tendencies are transmitted to immediate 
descendants. Thus from incipient evolutionary 
conditions where muscular and structural develop- 
ment were in greater need, the nervous system has 
gradually unfolded to the present unimaginable 
delicacy of feeling which we find in the healthy- 
minded hyper-sensitives. But it has also de- 
veloped with corresponding abnormalities in 
modes of particular hysteria and neurosis of 
which the primitive man knew relatively little, if 
anything. Its receptivity is almost appalling. It 
may be slightly comprehended in the diagnosis 
o"f several psychic diseases, some of which affect 
the senses in such a method that the scratching 
of a pencil in the same room sounds to the sufferer 
like the rumbling of a powerful engine, while the 
striking of a match seems more dazzling than a 
flash of lightning. Of course this is the abnor- 
mal, the degenerated sensitiveness resultant from 
physical disorder. But yet this exceptional, mis- 
directed delicacy only strongly suggests that the 
nervous system can be as favorably developed 
and to as great an extreme along evolutionary 
lines as it is possible of unfavorable development 
in these certain forms of neurasthenia and in- 
sanity. Abnormality of any description is simply 
retrogression or retardation; normality, the 



Psychic Development 31 

standard of evolution, at any given time, while 
supernormality is only the anticipated appearance 
of evolutionary forms and faculties. All that the 
nervous system accomplishes is in the subconscious 
mind of the race as former conscious, functional 
experience in times antedating the evolution of 
quadrupeds, and in times stretching beyond the 
imagination. The present state of the nerves, 
though in the normal, operative without the aid 
of consciousness, is still affected by our conscious- 
ness in processes of mental, psychic and bodily 
relationships, but when psychic progression has 
taken place, when the supersensorial has been 
attained, then we can consciously perform what 
evolution is now doing unconscious to direct sense 
perception. We will then be able to take up nerve 
development after a conscious fashion similarly 
as we did in a conscious though undoubtedly in a 
more instinctive manner when the race inhabited 
inferior forms. The same statements are equal 
of the automatic action which the sympathetic 
and cerebro-spinal systems carry on. Every auto- 
matic action of the body, every automatic reflex 
motion operating without personal will or con- 
sciousness, is builded on masses of sense experi- 
ences, inferences and perceptions gained in the 
infinite past of evolution which have subsided and 
by innumerable rectilinear repetitions have be- 



32 Practical Occultism 

come self-operative and self-functioning. It can 
be readily understood that, if the normal con- 
sciousness could enter the threshold of the sub- 
conscious mind, the automatic actions of the body 
could be directed and consciously supervised. We 
could then regulate the beatings of our heart, the 
degree of respiration and, generally speaking, 
turn the currents of the body along the line of 
continuous health and development. 

Upon the nervous system is based the entire 
physical man with his sensations and their possi- 
bility of responsiveness, with his personality and 
mental expression. The nervous system, in 
respectivity, is, therefore, either the limiting or 
expanding medium by which an Individual's per- 
sonality is determined in each incarnation, the 
particular nervous system being the sum-total 
effect of causes existing in a past life when the 
soul expressed itself either well or badly. For 
every variation of experience at the time of death 
becomes potential in subjectivity until it finds ex- 
pression in the life following. For if our nervous 
system, as we daily witness, be modified, de- 
veloped or degraded by our mental relationship 
with it, certainly the sum total of a life of such 
blending must have an important meaning; it will 
determine just how a future personality of an 
Individual will find itself. You must remember 



Psychic Development 33 

that in this universe nothing is lost, not an atom 
of individuality, no matter whether that individu- 
ality be greater than human, animal, floral, 
mineral, or simply chemical. The individuality 
may clothe itself in a new expression just as we 
change our wearing apparel, but that change is 
not a change of essence, but of form, of mode, of 
degree, of qualitativeness. 

The importance of the nervous system as the 
first essential in psychic development may be seen 
from the foregoing. It is also recognized by the 
psychologist as the primary requisite and work- 
ing factor in psychopathic treatment and in 
psycho-physiological relationships of all charac- 
ter. And in this same light is it also recognized 
by the psychic adept, the initial steps of whose 
development is found in the control and purifica- 
tion of the nerve currents. Thus the seeker after 
psychic progression will find himself advised to 
direct the entire area of consciousness toward 
rendering the body a fit conduit for psychic un- 
foldment by adapting the bundle of nerves upon 
which the body's wholeness depends, to the imme- 
diate dispensation and regulation of the conscious 
will. If we have once acquired that delicate 
adjustment of the physical motions of the body, 
then the most significant step has been taken. 

The nervous system is the fundamental, bi- 



34 



Practical Occultism 



ological factor, the most important of all opera- 
tions in the vertebrate body. All health and 
disease, all mental and psychic well-being, all 
individual progression and retrogression of being 
is developed from its condition. By it we see, 
hear, feel, taste, smell and are conscious of sense 
perceptions, sense inferences and their ultimate 
emotional and intellectual synthesis. It comprises 
the complete expression of physical consciousness. 
Now as all psychic development, as has been pre- 
viously stated, is simply an anticipation of evolu- 
tion in heightening the sense possibilities and 
tlelicacy of nerve structure, the immediate and 
initiatory step to take is to familiarize the mind 
with the physiology of the nervous system and its 
operations and influences on the mental, emo- 
tional and psychic element in human nature. 
When this is performed, the second condition is 
to learn the methods and the psycho-physiological 
variations by which nerve development is brought 
about. Of course these things require a compe- 
tent teacher, one who is master of psychology, 
one who has experienced psychic development, 
one who does not talk high-sounding phrases, but 
knows and imparts his knowledge according to 
the need. The misfortune is that in this country 
so many alleged practitioners of psychic develop- 
ment, psychopathic treatment and teachers of 



Psychic Development 35 

these things have been allowed to inflict their 
ignorance upon sensitive persons, eager and sin- 
cere to further their spiritual progress, but who 
have become semi-hysterics by following the un- 
certain methods of self-styled interpreters. The 
development of consciousness, the development of 
concentration and the other intricate phases of 
psychic development involve too serious uncer- 
tainties in the way of possible psychic disorder to 
be indiscriminately tampered with. Too much 
stress cannot be laid upon this point. The final 
necessity with regard to the development of nerve 
susceptibility is a constant practice of the known 
methods with the fullest intellectual awareness, 
with the fullest attitude of consciousness, for 
otherwise instead of development there will be 
the genesis of abnormal tendencies with all the 
variety of evils. A special word is suggested to 
those who practice concentration. Remembering 
that every thought is accompanied by a change 
in nerve parts we can readily understand how 
sporadic and indefinite concentration would lead 
to the complete undoing of the nerves. They 
should examine themselves with reference to their 
concentrative practices and see if in this respect 
they are included. 



36 



Practical Occultism 



Interaction of Mind and Nerves 

In all sense perceptions there is an afferent 
and efferent action of the nervous system. This 
double activity comprises an attitude of conscious- 
ness. When I see any object the primary im- 
press is received by the retina of the eye, thence 
carried by the sensory nerves to the brain and, 
as this activity arouses a state of consciousness, 
we have a sensation. The eye, however, is not 
the real center of vision, and, in this respect, the 
outward appearance deceives, for were the sen- 
sory nerves absent, though one had a thousand 
eyes, he would not see. This is equally true of 
the sense affections and the sense organs of the 
other senses. The sensory nerves are the basic 
necessity of all sense perceptions, hence it can be 
readily seen that a method which would purify 
and evolve them would lead to a supernormal 
sensitiveness which, in the occult, is called psychic 
perception. 

We have dwelt on the importance of the sen- 
sory nerves, yet we shall now consider something 
of even more particular importance. When the 
sensory nerves carry physical impressions to the 
brain, the action of the latter uses the nerves to 
express the manner and intensity by which such 
sense impressions were received. Here we come 



Psychic Development 37 

to the double activity of the nerves. First, they 
serve as vehicles through which physical motions 
are transmitted to consciousness; secondly, they 
serve as modes of the expression of consciousness 
in reponse to sense impressions. The nerves are 
very important, it is true ; yet the brain, the ulti- 
mate goal of all nerve action and responsiveness, 
is by far more important, for, at occasions, 
though all processes of sense impressions and 
nerve activity have been duly transmitted to the 
brain, yet the latter gives no response. This is 
because the brain is the determining factor in 
all sense perception, and in this sense is incom- 
parably more significant than the nerves. We 
shall later see how the mind has to be purified 
and brought under control just as the nerves, but 
the processes are far more difficult and of a 
more psychological significance. The purifica- 
tion of the nerves is a condition which does nec- 
essarily imply psychic development. Of course 
it is the physical basis for it. But there are 
numbers of schools of physical culture, especially 
the Delsarte system, which insist on the purifica- 
tion of the nerves as a sine qua non of physical 
development. In the Orient there is a similar 
system known as Hatha Yoga, by which the body 
and the nerves are rendered almost of gigantic 
power. But the control of the mind is a different 



38 Practical Occultism 

matter. In the far East the system by which 
this is accomplished is known as Raja Yoga. 
The exponents of this system have reached the 
very acme of psychic development. But to re- 
turn from this digression to the importance of 
the brain in sense correlations: the brain is the 
physical mechanism for that particular phase of 
consciousness known as mind. If the mind is 
present, if it is concentrated on that which 
sensory nerves report to it, then it is aware of the 
object and the sensation, otherwise not. There- 
fore, as the mind employs the nerves and the 
organs of the body in its various blendings with 
them it becomes essentially necessary to make the 
body in every sense a powerful medium, so, that 
when the mind has become aware of psychic 
methods, the body will be in a fit position to 
adapt itself to them. In using the expression 
"powerful," there is no allusion to muscular and 
structural largeness, simply to the specialization 
of that indescribable something which is mani- 
fested in the breath and life force of all beings, 
and which is modulated by the condition of the 
nerves. It requires an article in itself to explain 
the nature of this vital force which keeps the 
body alive. In India this force is called Prana. 
It is not breath, but that which manifests itself 
as breath. The nervous system, particularly the 



Psychic Development 39 

spinal cord, is the storehouse and distributer of 
this force. When it is under control we become 
masters of our own bodies and of all things which 
live and move through it — therefore of the entire 
universe. We become merged in Omnipotence, 
and this union is Raja Yoga. But this force is 
the second consideration in psychic development 
and shall be treated later. 

The Mind 

The synthesizing, correlating faculty by which 
sense impressions are recognized and classed 
through subject sense faculties is the mind. 
From the moment of birth until the last lease of 
life in the death sigh, the nervous system, as a 
whole, is in constant activity, receiving and trans- 
mitting sense relations, but the awareness of this 
transmission is performed by the mind. When I 
am looking at any object, my mind is in concen- 
trated attention to the particular sensation which 
a particular portion of the nervous system is re- 
cording, but in the meantime the system, as a 
whole, is transmitting other impressions of sound 
or light, and so forth, which the mind, owing to 
its fixedness of attention, fails to recognize. But 
let the vibration of sound or light affect the 
nerves in any particular intensity, the correspond- 



40 Practical Occultism 

ence is of such impressiveness that it disturbs 
the fixed attention and makes it conscious of the 
innovating sensations. You must never forget 
that the entire nervous system is in operation at 
all times and that therefore every activity of 
thought is indirectly telling in effect on every 
nerve particle. To illustrate this more clearly: 
You are at the opera, with the mind concentrated 
on an intermezzo; the mind is aware only of a 
sum-total of sound vibrations, yet, at the same 
instance, the nervous system is at work register- 
ing every note in perfect order, intensity, delicacy, 
or fullness, as the case may be. Every particle 
of the sum of the sound vibrations, even to the 
slightest conceivable measurements, are properly 
transmitted to the brain — to the mind. At the 
same time the senses are sending impressions of 
light, of color, of form and properly expressing 
the reflex mental states in emotion. If the mind 
were so remarkably developed that it could be 
aware in the same moment of all these recorded 
impressions, the area of its sense life and suscep- 
tibilities would be immeasurably broadened. 
And yet there is a subconscious instinctive recog- 
nition of all these impressions. The idea is to 
replace the instinctive by the attentive conscious- 
ness. All depends upon the possibility of fixed- 
ness of mind and the determination to become 



Psychic Development 41 

conscious of as many sense impressions as pos- 
sible. Of course the ultimum of any such effort 
passes the imagination. For the sake of such 
development many parents instruct their children 
to remember as much as they can of what they 
saw on passing a certain shop window — in other 
words, to recall as many sight impressions as were 
transmitted. In this way they develop the atten- 
tive faculty, the memnonic faculty, the perceptive 
faculty, and in general develop the entire con- 
sciousness into a greater width and scope. 

That the mind is the chief factor in all sense 
operations is again witnessed in sleep when it 
is temporarily separated from the earth plane 
and consequently remains unaware of sense im- 
pressions and physical contact with the exception 
of such subjective impressions as rise from the 
storehouse of memory and express themselves in 
thought and emotion in the dream state. It is 
here asserted that the true seat of sensation is 
the mind, because it lends the mental meaning and 
color and form to all sense vibrations, because it 
is the receiving point of all sense perceptions, and 
because, as has been said, were it not for its ac- 
tivity the senses could transmit impression after 
impression with no recognition by consciousness. 
The fact that the mind comprises the faculties of 
sensation, explains psychic and after death states 



42 Practical Occultism 

when personality is completely severed from the 
earth plane and the body lies as a lump of clay 
while the person is still able to witness all the 
phenomena of sense life, as Psychic Research 
societies have conclusively shown. Were this not 
true, life at the physical dissolution would be im- 
possible, for all forms of consciousness are infal- 
libly associated with sense experiences or what 
is equal thereto. Some may object that at bodily 
disintegration the nervous system is destroyed 
and that the problem arises of how sensation can 
be experienced without nerve transmission. In 
reply it may be asked that how do we know 
that nature in her infinite variableness has limited 
sense experience and the expressions of conscious- 
ness solely to physical brains and nervous sys- 
tems? Moreover, our mental therapeuticions, 
practitioners of hypnotism and similar psychic 
methods and our psychologists have discovered 
certain forms of consciousness unallied and, in 
cases, diametrically opposed to the normal forms 
of consciousness associated with nerve and brain 
activity — and yet the newly discovered forms of 
consciousness and the normal form comprise the 
same individual. In support of this position Pro- 
fessor William James has repeatedly asserted 
that there are other modes of consciousness sep- 
arated from the normal by the thinnest veils. 



Psychic Development 43 

Again the life that we lead here on this plane 
and the psychic life led on the planes immediately 
above where death will place us are different in 
the extreme. The one psychology calls objective, 
the other, subjective. It is almost impossible to 
definitely explain to the uninformed reader the 
exact conditions which obtain on the psychic 
plane. It would be as difficult as an attempt to 
explain the conditions of civilized cities to life- 
inhabitants of the wilderness. The sensations 
experienced in the mortal casement of spirit, the 
body, are more concrete, possess greater objec- 
tivity, while psychic sensations, although the com- 
parison is somewhat inadequate, are analogous 
to dream sensations, only that the former possess 
as unfailing an accuracy as the sensations re- 
corded in the waking state of physical life. It is 
impossible in a condensed article of this kind to 
properly explain subjective sensation, yet a few 
suggestions are a propos. In a preceding article 
it has been said that on every plane of being the 
lives that inhabit it are possessed of a medium of 
transmission of the sense and objective experi- 
ences which obtain there, corresponding in faculty 
and functions to our nervous system. To us the 
plane just above is the psychic, the subjective and 
when we reach it, either through personal effort 
in this life or by the death process, we at once 



44 Practical Occultism 

commence to use this new sense correlating me- 
dium. We will accordingly find that the psychic 
plane is as real as the earth plane and that our 
experiences are equal in consciousness to our ex- 
periences here. Psychic development will enable 
us to observe this plane by anticipating the death 
process. Thus death, though it disintegrates our 
bodily nerve system, yet it does not do away with 
the possibility of sense perception. Again, thj 
mind is the ultimate and determining factor in 
all sense activities, and similarly as death de- 
stroys the physical brain, the mere mechanism of 
mind, yet it does not affect the latter itself, which, 
owing to its rarer material composition, survives 
the decay of the grosser, material, physical, com- 
posite body. 

Herein we have the Mendings of the mind and 
of the nerves and the. Mendings of the nerves and 
the mind. We have seen how the sensory nerves 
convey material objects and sense impressions to 
the brain and how, therefore, the mind is the 
aim to which all sense faculties and physical rela- 
tionships tend. Now the mind in its turn per- 
forms as remarkable an operation in responding 
to sense vibrations recorded by the nervous sys- 
tem as the latter does in its field of action. All 
the senses, in fact, all what nature labors for, is 
to present opportunities to the mind to gain 



Psychic Development 45 

higher and higher experiences, and the mind, 
after it has synthesized these experiences, uses 
them in determining greater sense and physical 
truths, which, in time, lead to greater emotional 
and mental criterions. Thus the race in periods 
of inferior evolution employed its limited sense 
knowledge in connection with innovating sense 
experiences until, finally, we have arrived at the 
present state, using as our ancestors past racial 
knowledge to determine the essence and classifi- 
cation of new phenomena. All that we are and 
know to-day is linked bit by bit to all that the 
race has been and known in every moment of 
its indefinite past. The highest mathematical 
concept is evolved by gradual transitions from 
the most primitive methods of the perception of 
quantities by the first manifestation of sense life, 
as example in the polyp. And any psychic de- 
velopment will be linked bit by bit to the highest 
knowledge of the normal objective consciousness. 
There is no suddenness or jump. It is all a mat- 
ter of linear progression. 

One of the great psychological principles in 
psychic development which has received promi- 
nent attention is that the mind is most intricately 
systematized just as the parts of the nerve sys- 
tem whose activities correspond with it are intri- 
cately systematized. Somewhere in mental po- 



46 Practical Occultism 

tentiality are the life experiences of this life and 
of the lives which, since the beginning of time, 
have labored for the development of our present 
existence. Psychic development lays claim to 
unearthing this potentiality and bringing back be- 
fore the vision of consciousness the experiences 
of the Past of the soul. Though potential, all 
mental vibrations continue to exert their influence, 
for nothing becomes motionless or inoperative, 
and thus beyqnd or beneath the attentive con- 
sciousness their influence manifests itself. With 
every mental change, with every variation of con- 
sciousness there corresponds a nerve change. If 
a mental change is promotive the alternation in 
neural activity will be promotive and pleasing; if 
the mental change be discordant in any manner 
it arouses inefficient neural activity productive of 
pain. In the one case there is health — physical, 
emotional, mental and psychic — and, in the other 
case, there is the opposite. 

The complex aggregate of promotive mental 
changes of our life therefore determines the 
normality of the nervous system and health; the 
complex aggregate of discordant mental changes, 
the abnormal drift of the system, together with 
depletion of vitality and liability to functional 
disorders. Here is the explanation of all the 
relativities of life comprising all the physical, 



Psychic Development 47 

mental and emotional states perceptible in con- 
nection with the Mendings of the mind and the 
body. 

From this it may be inferred that optimism is 
an essential element in psychic development, be- 
cause with optimistic attitudes the activity of the 
body will be in harmony, the mental and emo- 
tional states will correspond in happiness of char- 
acter and the entire man will be in greater recep- 
tivity for the dawn of the psychic faculties. 

Psychic development is a subject which includes 
a number of important minor subjects, among 
which are "concentration," "life-force," "studies 
of psychic perception," and others. They will be 
separately treated, the subject in each instance 
receiving all possible elaboration and insight. 



PSYCHIC DEVELOPMENT AND 
MENTAL THERAPEUTICS 

Lecture Delivered in London, England, 1907 

My friends, I am here to-night not to talk 
New Thought to you solely. I shall not solely 
.talk on Spiritualism, in fact, my discussion shall 
be confined to no one system or cult. It shall 
be all-embracing, all-inclusive. It shall be more 
especially directed to those actual realities and 
powers which lie stored up in the human brain 
and which the latest scientific psychology has re- 
vealed. It would be unjust in the extreme to talk 
to you upon vague and indefinite subjects, sub- 
jects which I should have to ask you to believe 
rather than understand. The trouble to-day is 
that so many of our platform lecturers entertain 
their audiences with subjects that are so tinged 
with the so-termed occult and the supernormal 
that their hearers leave the audience hall with 
less comprehension than on entering, and instead 
of interesting they bore them to tears. Any dis- 
cussion of psychic development, anything per- 

48 



Psychic Development 49 

taining to mental curative and psychic curative 
processes should be handled in a direct, matter-of- 
fact, easily understandable way. It is this I shall 
attempt to-night in my lecture on Psychic Devel- 
opment and Mental Therapeutics. 

I am going to begin without any circumlocu- 
tion, and the first point I shall consider shall be 
the Nervous System, as it, among all other fac- 
tors of the human body, essentially features in 
the development of the psychic element in human 
nature and likewise in the arrest and cure of 
disease by power of mind. All health and disease 
is directly or indirectly traceable to the action of 
the nerves, and when your Christian Scientist or 
New Thought exponent or your Mental Practi- 
tioner operate their methods, they, knowingly or 
unknowingly, do so by suggestion, that is, by dis- 
tracting the patient's mind from the disease and 
compelling him to center his mind on healthy- 
minded thought. The new healthy mental atti- 
tude quiets the action of the nerves, rests the sys- 
tem, and Nature can more effectively do her work 
of restoring the body to normal health. The 
chief factor in psychic development, likewise, is 
the purification of the nerves, thereby increasing 
their susceptibility. When the nerves are under 
control the mind is under control. You can hear 
better, see better, feel better, and so on, and as 



50 Practical Occultism 

the nerves are more and more controlled the bet- 
tered sight grows into a sight beyond the every- 
day sight, and this is called psychic sight. Then 
you will see what others fail to see because their 
nervous system is not susceptible to the fine vibra- 
tions which your psychic practices have brought 
you. The same holds good of all the senses. 
And herein lies the secret of all the mystifying 
discussion of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so 
on. These faculties lie in the development of 
the every-day sense faculties, and this develop- 
ment in turn is brought about by methods I shall 
later discuss. In the cure of disease this develop- 
ment is all-important, as it is by the nerves and by 
the condition and activity of the nerves that most 
of the workings of the body, such as digestion 
and breathing and other processes, are carried on. 
You are all aware that in a nervous state breath- 
ing is hard, digestion irregular, and the blood 
fevered. So the first step to take is to learn the 
ways by which the nerves are disturbed, and by 
knowing these ways we can avoid them. Also 
we must learn the ways by which the nerves are 
quieted and brought under control, and in this 
knowledge about the disturbance and the better- 
ment of the nerves lies the cure of disease and 
the development of the every-day senses into 
psychic senses. I can feel some of you asking 



Psychic Development 51 

the question, How can you explain the cure of 
functional disorders by quieting and bringing the 
nerves under control? In answering this query 
I am going to make one of the most important 
statements of the evening, and I am asking your 
attentive consideration. The greater number of 
functional disturbances are brought about by an 
impure, sickened condition of the nerves which 
have lessened the vitality of the system and in- 
vited functional disturbances. Of course, there 
are some functional disorders which lie beyond 
the present range of mental cure, but mental cure 
will do a great deal in quieting the system so that 
it becomes better fit to permit Nature to do the 
curing work. In the highest sense every disease 
can be cured, but not so much by what I should 
call mental science as what I should call the dis- 
play of the great, hidden soul-powers within the 
inner self of every man and woman, yea, every 
animal, plant or mineral. Because of the all- 
presence of God, therefore His all-existence, He 
is the soul of every one of us — no, even better 
expressed, He is us. By concentrating the entire 
mind and consciousness upon this supreme fact 
the omnipotence of spirit is invoked and no ill, 
no distress but what can be administered to by 
the omnipotence within the soul. 

But I wish to dwell upon the mental processes 



52 Practical Occultism 

in more immediate range, processes more easily 
learned and more readily applied. We have said 
that the nerves were the essential factors in all 
curative work or development. But these in turn 
are controlled, consciously or unconsciously, by 
the mental processes, by our minds. Science has 
told us that every time we think there is a change 
going on in our nervous system. Now you can 
readily see how a bad thought, a pessimistic 
thought, a thought of fear or a thought of worry 
will make a sickening change in the nerves. And 
if one persists in wrong-thinking, in pessimistic- 
thinking, if one is ever at the point of fear, 
of indecision, of worry, if one is continuously 
disease-suspicious, the nervous system will be 
shattered. You will have your nervous prostra- 
tionist, with the long list of nervous disorders 
mothering in turn various functional diseases. 
It is a known fact that most people who are nerv- 
ously affected are at the same time the victims 
of stomach or heart disorders and other dis- 
orders. They are liable to all conditions of 
disease. And your insane patients, and the large 
number of sanitarium patients are all the victims 
of nervous diseases brought about through tre- 
mendous worries and wrong mental attitudes. 
Think right, think wholesome, healthy thoughts 
is the first advice the applicant for cure of disease 



Psychic Development 53 

and for psychic development will receive at the 
hands of the teacher. Be optimistic in thought, 
think high, spiritual thoughts and your nerves 
will operate in a healthy way, making you phys- 
ically high-spirited, just as you are on those ex- 
ceptional days when the spring sun bathes you in 
its magnetic warmth and enlivens every atom of 
your body. You see, I am driving at one par- 
ticular point in speaking of the nerves, and that is 
that it is the mind which controls them absolutely 
and either for the good or the ill of the entire 
person. And in support of what I am saying you 
may consult any book on psychology or any stu- 
dent of nervous disorders. The mind is every- 
thing, and with this in mind that great spiritual 
master of the sixth century before Christ, the 
great Buddha, announced to the world: "All that 
we are is the result of what we have thought. 
It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of 
our thoughts." 

We thus come to the consideration of the in- 
fluence of thought, and it will be an easy matter, 
as every one of you before me have had experi- 
ences which will bear out the truth of my state- 
ment, that thought and its influence, that mental 
attitudes govern our physical well-being, and, ap- 
plied to the psychic nature, control its develop- 
ment. But for the present I am going to leave 



54 Practical Occultism 

psychic development out of consideration and 
apply myself solely to disease and the cure of 
disease as effected by mind. 

In doing this I am going to give you every- 
day examples. I will not confuse you with a 
long, uninteresting discussion on the psychological 
phases of thought. At any rate most of you de- 
spise technical things and abstract mysteries as 
much as I do. Let us come down to home facts. 
Somebody has insulted you. The thought of this 
disturbs your brain, it fevers your blood, it con- 
tracts your muscles, it excites the nerves. Think 
what just a thought has done. And you have 
heard of cases where a man felt himself so in- 
jured, he became so angry that he foamed at 
the mouth, until his body could no longer stand 
the pressure and the subject fell dead. A 
thought killed him. Or refresh your memories 
with incidents of people you have known who 
have been frightened to death. And although 
apart from the subject, it might be appropriate 
to say that your children should never be fright- 
ened by silly ghost stories and bugaboo tales. 
The mother who permits such things is poisoning 
the nerves and the life of her child. Worry, 
too, has its influence on the body. It ages the 
face, it draws circles and engraves wrinkles into 
it. It turns the hair gray, and in highly special- 



Psychic Development 55 

ized cases it gradually kills. All of you person- 
ally know or have heard of people whose brains 
became so wrecked with worry-thoughts as to 
completely unbalance the mind, and in fits of in- 
sanity have shot, hanged or stabbed themselves. 
Grief also pays its disturbing part on the body. 
Grief, especially protracted, disturbs proper cir- 
culation, it rots the gray matter of the brain. 
There have been cases where death or insanity 
has followed persistent grief. All these condi- 
tions are purely mental attitudes. 

I have been talking rather generally. I will 
be more definite. Worry is frequently accom- 
panied by loss of weight. In the recent panic a 
New York broker, whom I know, lost twenty 
pounds in two weeks. Physicians examined him. 
He was physically all right. It was depression 
and fear that did the work. Anger flooding the 
arteries of the brain may cause epilepsy, hysteria, 
and hemorrhage, resulting frequently in apoplexy. 
People of an irritable disposition are subjects of 
frequent headaches. Right here it may be said 
that irritability, nervousness, worry, morbid 
fears, or any distressing mental attitude on the 
part of mothers often directly influence the bodies 
of their children, inducing various physical dis- 
orders. Cases are recorded where anger, grief 
or fright of the mother resulted in a chemical 



$6 Practical Occultism 

change of the milk, poisoning, sickening, and 
sometimes causing the death of her nursing in- 
fant. Biliousness and constipation may be a 
direct result of mental disorders. 

The destructive power of thought is indefinite. 
Its insidious killing force may be gradual or it 
may be instantaneous. I know, of one case, a 
negro in momentary fear of lynching, whose hair 
grew gray and his finger-nails unnaturally long in 
one night. I will not tire you with any further 
descriptive instances of influences of wrong-think- 
ing. But to bring you to a still clearer under- 
standing of thought-power, let me cite the case 
of a well-known scientist who investigated and 
discovered the great force of thought. In an 
effort to determine just in how far thought can 
influence the body he built himself a table based 
on excellently balanced measurements. He 
danced a jig and then lay on the table. Natu- 
rally the rush of the blood to the feet threw the 
table downward in the direction of the feet. He 
waited some time. Then he again laid himself 
on the table and waited until the resultant dis- 
turbance of the motion was quieted. The table 
was perfectly balanced. Then he commenced 
thinking about jigging. He concentrated his 
whole mind on it. He thought of nothing else. 
And to the surprise of attending students the 



Psychic Development 57 

delicately balanced table bowed perceptibly in the 
direction of the feet. A thought, physically un- 
assisted, created an actual tipping of that table. 
That is certainly wonderful, but there are even 
more wonderful occurrences. A prisoner, sen- 
tenced to be hanged, was, by permission of the 
court, placed in the hands of the faculty of a 
medical college for psycho-physiological investi- 
gation. The prisoner was led blindfolded into 
the operation room, placed on the table, and 
then informed that the court had changed his 
sentence from hanging to being bled to death. 
The surgeons, taking a delicate instrument, 
scratched the subject's arm and then trickled luke- 
warm water from the point of irritation. The 
prisoner was informed that he was slowly bleed- 
ing to death. The thought focalized itself into 
his consciousness. He actually believed that he 
was dying. The belief commenced its work on 
the circulatory system, decreasing the flow of 
blood. Little by little the blood coursed slower 
and slower through veins and arteries. Suddenly 
the subject gasped, and before the physicians 
could convince him of the wrong mental attitude 
he was dead. The belief that he was dying killed 
the man. A mere thought, yet its destructive in- 
fluence was incalculable. A thought may be 
something intangible, invisible and all of that, 



58 Practical Occultism 

but, like electricity, magnetism, gravitation and 
other hidden forces, its power is tremendous. 
But similarly as these natural forces mentioned 
may destroy or build up, so thought, which, in 
fact, is a subtle physical, chemical force, can 
also be a serviceable factor as well as destructive. 
Fire will cook a meal as well as burn a child. 
Thought may kill or drive to insanity, but it can 
equally develop the brain and the life-forces, and 
in as exact a ratio as its influence may be destruc- 
tive. I have tried to give you some description 
of the influence of thought. Naturally, because 
of briefness of the allotted time, it must be partial 
and indeterminate, but nevertheless some things 
have been stated which, if followed up, will lead 
to wide results. All that a lecturer can do is to 
suggest. The hearer can take up the suggestion 
and make the most of it. 

Possibly the most simple method of bringing 
the relationship of thought and body before you 
will be to speak of some of those psychological 
states in which we see the action of mind upon 
nerves in an immediate and direct manner. I 
need only speak of hysteria. In developed cases 
of this affection we find some facts which are ex- 
tremely to the point in our discussion. It is 
known that the slightest variation of mental con- 
dition will be immediately expressed in physical 



Psychic Development 59 

workings. A hysteric is subject to loss of mem- 
ory, partial paralysis of the body, blindness, 
contractions, mutism, oedema, all of them affec- 
tions not dependent on any discoverable lesion, 
but on the defects of nervous co-ordination, char- 
acteristic of hysteria. Such affections, even when 
of long standing, may quite suddenly disappear 
under hypnotic suggestion. The hysteric is even 
liable to phantom tumors. Placed under hyp- 
notic control, the patient frequently regains sight, 
control over limbs, the tumors disappear, and so 
on. This goes to show that hysteria causes ap- 
parent functional disturbances when in reality 
there is no disorder in the functional arrange- 
ment. The trouble is to be looked for in the 
nervous system, which, in this instance, is pecu- 
liarly disarranged in its condition and activity. 

Now, if we recall that nervous aberrations are 
dependent on disordered mental conditions we 
must look for hysteria, for St. Vitus' dance, for 
epilepsy, for neurasthenia, for psychasthenia and 
kindred diseases in the mind. What terrible 
mental affliction has come into the person's life 
which has so completely undone the physical? 
Generally, we discover that some sudden fear, 
some overwhelming sorrow, has almost destroyed 
the brain and the nerve centers in the brain which 
control locomotion and automatic motor activi- 



6o Practical Occultism 

ties. The patient has lost control over the mind, 
and we find loss of memory and of will. Where 
the nervous disease is inherited, it is dependent 
on various causes. At times it may be the 
mother's condition, at others, the degeneracy of 
vital stamina in the parents, upon which depends 
normal activity of the nerves. Directly or in- 
directly, therefore, these conditions depend on 
the mind. 

What most interests us about the hysteric is 
the genesis and persistence of apparent functional 
disorders, to which there is no reality save as 
effected by the hysteric attitude of mind. Mind, 
they are as real in outward appearance as normal 
functional disorders and tumors, but they are not 
real in a true sense, because upon suggestion they 
disappear. This leads me to a very singular and 
important idea. It is only an hypothesis, but it 
is momentous even in so far. May not all func- 
tional disturbances of the more real order in 
some manner resemble the phantom functional 
disorders of hysteria? May they also not be as 
liable to suggestion in their cure? That there 
have been cures of functional disturbances I 
firmly believe. I doubt not for one instant that 
Christian Science and the various therapeutical 
cults of our day have made actual functional 
cures, even as they were performed through the 



Psychic Development 61 

suggestion of relics, pilgrimages and prayers in 
earlier times. 

A famous scientist has told us that, though we 
may know the mechanical or chemical equivalents 
of thought, we may never know what thought is. 
He is in a measure correct. Thought, like elec- 
tricity, manifests its power and influence, but, like 
electricity, it remains an unknown quantity. It 
is one of those finer forces of nature which escape 
indefinite analysis or scrutiny. A knowledge of 
its essence, however, is of minor importance as 
compared with a knowledge and a practice of its 
applications. You may not know what thought 
is, but you can learn to control and modify it. 
You are at liberty to think certain thoughts and 
refrain from thinking others. It is as you 
choose. At all events you are setting loose a 
great physical or rather psychic force, for psychic 
forces are subtle physical forces, indiscernible to 
the normal senses, but perceived by the psychic 
senses. You are invoking a great power, and 
if you invoke it properly the results will be bene- 
ficial in ratio to your power of invoking it. Im- 
properly called forth it disturbs, creates inhar- 
mony, as do all other physical vibrations. 

And here I am persuaded to say something of 
concentration. Concentration is the centraliza- 
tion of consciousness upon a given thought or set 



62 Practical Occultism 

of thoughts. It implies that you entertain special 
thoughts to the exclusion of all other thoughts. 
It means that for the time being you know noth- 
ing save what your mind is concentrated upon. 
And in proportion to your power to concentrate 
will time escape you, and you will become un- 
aware of the disturbance of surrounding condi- 
tions. Like Archimedes you may become so 
thoroughly concentrated that the passing of an 
army will go unnoticed. Think of the vast phys- 
ical good you could insure yourselves if you could 
properly concentrate your mind upon sane, 
healthy thoughts. You could make your body 
almost unliable to physical disorders by bringing 
the nerves, directly influenced by the mind, under 
full control. Your vitality would be immeasur- 
ably increased. Your body would become a fit 
vessel to cross this ocean of life, a fit vessel and 
habitation for the spirit. But concentration is 
not an easy matter. It requires effort, painstak- 
ing effort, effort of days and weeks, yes, months 
and years. Practice little by little. If disturb- 
ing thoughts, thoughts of worry, or fear, or 
anger, cross your mind, suppress them. That is 
the first step to concentration. Do not allow 
every passing turn of thought to incommode you 
and set your brain and nerves awhirl. If anger 
comes, think opposite thoughts. If fear of 



Psychic Development 63 

disease, use a pinch of Christian Science. Each 
day retire into the silence of your being. Medi- 
tate with fervor upon the strength of thought, 
upon its power for good. Know that every time 
you think thoughts of strength, of mental or spir- 
itual uplifting, you are making an actual headway 
against the odds of circumstances, whether 
these circumstances be those of ill-health or men- 
tal distress. Increase the time of your medita- 
tions — from five minutes to ten minutes, and so 
on, until finally you can remain in abstract medi- 
tation for an indefinite length of time — just so 
long as it pleases you. I am not advising you, 
however, to concentrate the entire mind solely 
upon things physical or material. But realize 
that your mind is like a loadstone, if the com- 
parison may be sustained. By concentration you 
increase its magnetic power so that it attracts 
to it that upon which it is centered. In occult 
teaching this magnetization of the mind is stated 
to be indefinite, and from attracting health, moral, 
physical or psychic, from attracting happier con- 
ditions, you may even attract physical objects. 
You may, in time, say the seers of psychic proc- 
esses, control the entirety of nature through this 
tremendous power of concentration than which 
there exists no greater in the universe. Like all 
other physical or psychic motions, concentrated 



64 Practical Occultism 

thought radiates its respective influence. Of 
course there is such a thing as bad contraction 
manifest, for example, in the insistency of per- 
nicious habits of thought or conduct. They, too, 
radiate influences, but in this instance it is destruc- 
tive. Science tells you that there is no stopping 
to a motion or loose force. It continues to vi- 
brate and re-vibrate. If this happens to strike 
you it will change many of the stray, vague, in- 
sipid and imperfect thoughts that float through 
the idle mind. Thoughts do radiate an influ- 
ence, a decided influence, and the combined influ- 
ence of the combined thought-process radiates 
a combined influence which, in terms of the occult, 
is called aura. An aura is the sum-total of the 
mental impressions which vibrate about each per- 
son. This explains why some people attract and 
others repel you. Their auras, their thought- 
processes are attractive or repellent as the in- 
stance may prove. I wish you to dwell on this 
particular thought. Some people who are called 
psychics, that is, people who are more than nor- 
mally sensitive, can see this aura. But I prom- 
ised you not to go too deeply into the occult, 
into things which I cannot prove to you without 
going about yards of circumlocution. These are 
simply some minor suggestions, but they are of 
tremendous importance. 



Psychic Development 6$ 

I am getting into the "Psychic Development" 
part of my discourse. I have given ideas about 
it all the way along. You will remember that 
I characterized psychic sight and hearing as a 
growth of the normal sight and hearing. They 
are not something different. The psychic is sen- 
sitive to physical vibrations, of which you are 
unconscious, because your senses have not as yet 
developed to the point where they can perceive 
those subtler physical motions of which astral 
bodies and vibrations are composed. You can 
develop your nerves upon which your senses are 
based, however, until they will be so sensitized 
as to transfer those vibrations to your conscious- 
ness. You will then be as aware of the world 
of the departed, the psychic plane, as you are of 
the one we inhabit. You will recognize those 
who have gone before you and be enabled to 
converse with them. You will be able to read 
the thoughts of others, their desires, their mental 
attitudes in general. You will be able to discern 
that aura of which I previously spoke, the aura 
which is placed about the statues, particularly the 
head of the saints of the Roman Catholic church 
and of the holy ones of various religions through- 
out India and Thibet. In the realm of the 
psychic, thoughts have form even as physical ob- 
jects have on our earth-plane. You cannot see 



66 Practical Occultism 

them in ordinary life, because they are com- 
posed of those rarer ethers undiseernible by the 
normal eye, but readily visible to the clairvoyant 
vision* You will recognize the importance of 
thoughts and come to a very careful selection of 
your personal thoughts. You will be convinced 
of the truth of immortality. The old supersti- 
tions you formerly believed will become thor- 
oughly eradicated. You will come into close 
vision of great spiritual truths which have ever 
been the nucleus of religion and religious aspira- 
tion. You will more and more clearly under- 
* stand the theosophical conception of the Brother- 
hood of Man*by understanding how indelibly all 
lives are associated in the physical and the 
psychic. Thus your sympathies and emotions 
will grow out of their personal limitations into 
divinely universal sympathies. You will become 
more and more in touch with the Heart of Being. 
You will lose more and more the sense of the 
merely personal with its retinue of selfish acts. 
The spiritual side of your nature will develop 
and the development will be in exact ratio to your 
attitude in developing your psychic nature. As 
long as you are selfish, so long will you be hin- 
dered in the acquisition of psychic faculties, for 
when occult power would be of assistance to you 
in dubious circumstances, you might so employ it. 



Psychic Development 67 

I have merely suggested some psychic truths. 
You will notice that I have deliberately elimi- 
nated from this discussion anything of the mys- 
tery-mongering you so often meet with in the 
charlatan type of occult exponents. I have not 
dwelt upon any possible power that might accrue 
to you through psychic development. I have 
dwelt on the spiritual uplifting which would be 
yours through psychic vision. You would come 
into direct communication with those whose teach- 
ings would advise you against all personal phases 
of occult effort. They would bring to you spir- 
itual truth, spiritual discernment, spiritual en- 
couragement. The personal phases of psychic 
development have meaning only as they are di- 
rected toward the spiritual. When they are di- 
rected toward personal aggrandizement in any 
form they are unworthy. 

One of the first requisites toward psychic de- 
velopment is persistent optimism. That has a 
wonderful effect on the nerves and makes the 
body fit for the work of development. Use per- 
sistent doses of suggestion to strengthen you 
against disease in any form. Learn to breathe 
correctly, for the life of the breath is developed 
through proper breathing. And the life of the 
breath is the force that vitalizes the body, the 
same force which is all-pervading in that it is 



68 Practical Occultism 

the same as the force that vivifies all nature. 
Gain control of that force and you have made 
a tremendous step toward the control of your 
surroundings, ultimately of natural forces. 
Breathe through^ the whole body. The trouble 
is that most people breathe only from the chest. 
They should at least breathe from the abdomen, 
and through the nose. That is very important. 
Breathing through the mouth is dangerous and 
unnatural. Primitive peoples, savages, are never 
guilty of this unnatural method of breathing. 
.The animal world and these primitive types al- 
ways breathe through the nose. After you have 
practiced breathing in this correct manner, you 
will find yourself breathing deeper in the central 
portions of your body. Continue, and when you 
inhale, you will find that you breathe in and 
through every atom of your body. That is the 
way to breathe. This breathing purifies the 
nerves; it gives them powerful vitality and re- 
sistance to disease. Sickness will be unknown to 
you. You will find that your normal senses are 
becoming vivified, and that you are developing 
new senses. Remember that I am speaking in 
terms of psychology. I am not unscientific. 
Vivification of the normal senses is called hyper- 
aesthesia in psychology, the development of new 
senses heteraesthesia. 



Psychic Development 69 

Actual practice will do more for you than 
anything I might tell you. Intellectual under- 
standing in these matters is of little consequence 
as compared with one ounce of result from prac- 
tice. When your nostrils become Sensitive to 
fine perfumes, when you begin to hear things 
from a distance, when you see objects remote in 
space, when you grow to read the thoughts of 
others, when you become sensitive to people's 
auras — then you will know. Try the practices 
mentioned above and you will find truth in all 
that I am saying to you. 

The new psychology has the assistance of the 
exact sciences. We are not dealing in uncertain- 
ties. Each day is bringing to light new phases 
of psychological insight and discovery, and each 
assertion of the occultists and the spiritual psy- 
chologists is becoming verified in the light of the 
new science. "Radiant matter" is not far from 
astral matter, and the "N-ray" is almost visual- 
izing thought. Spiritual truth will always assert 
itself. Nothing can hinder its expression. And 
of spiritual truth are the things which I have 
been speaking. But it is personal psychic effort 
that is needed, and with this suggestion of per- 
sonal psychic effort I close. 



PSYCHIC SUGGESTIONS 

The revelations of the ancient teachers of the 
Orient, through their modern representatives and 
the revelations of our present-day scientists con- 
cerning mental and psychic phenomena, have 
made the most profound impression on the think- 
ing classes. Until a generation ago we had but 
rarely witnessed these phenomena save in un- 
classified, in unimportant and unnoticeable in- 
stances. They created no general impression as 
they now do. The time came, however, when 
scientists began interesting themselves in these 
super-normal experiences, presenting so many 
complex psychological problems which they could 
not ignore. Investigation after investigation 
was carried on with this and that bearing, but 
the ultimate consequence was that psychology has 
become an almost new science, so many were the 
discoveries and correlative inferences which 
altered the old ideas of the mind and its phe- 
nomena. Other branches of science, including 
chemistry and biology, have likewise felt the reno- 
vating influences of these discoveries. 

70 



Psychic Suggestions 71 

As an example of these influences we have 
the discovery of a subjective mind separate in 
essence, activity and possibilities from the normal 
mentality of every-day life; we have the discovery 
of the submissiveness of the entire nervo-muscular 
and the vegetative systems to the action and di- 
rection of subjective intelligence in such phenom- 
ena as the cure of disease; we have, therefore, 
the discovery of a larger ego, "the real individ- 
ual," of which the personal, objective conscious- 
ness is but a minor projection. We have the 
discover^ 7 of tremendous psychic probabilities in 
the manifestation of faculties over-stepping by 
far the faculties and functions of the normal 
powers of the mind and normal consciousness. 
These discoveries alone warrant the earnest con- 
sideration of any student of psychology in its rela- 
tion to religion, because their ultimate effect on 
that science in elaborating spiritual verities can- 
not be too fully appreciated. In physics we see 
the influence of these psychic manifestations in 
the discovery of what might be called "radiant 
matter" and of new psycho-physical forces sug- 
gestive of still more important findings; in par- 
ticular biology this influence is witnessed in the 
discovery that the placenta in foetal development 
is a respiratory rather than a nutritive factor. 
The latter discovery evolved from the inferences 



72 Practical Occultism 

of the late Dr. Jerome A. Anderson, of San 
Francisco, who interpreted it through investiga- 
tions in embryology in an effort to establish an 
anatomical proof for belief in reincarnation. In 
general biology certain scientists, influenced by 
psychic phenomena in their researches, have fur- 
nished scientific premises for spiritual belief by 
confuting this particular error of materialistic 
monism; "the idea that the specific guiding power 
which we call 'life' is one of the forms of material 
energy," and by proving that life is not liable 
to the decomposition and change of material ele- 
ments. 

These psychic manifestations express them- 
selves either in communication with unseen intel- 
ligences, in a display of marvelous psychic powers, 
such as telepathy, hearing, seeing at a distance, 
exhibiting remarkable feats of memory, or in 
exercising an almost miraculous power of the 
mind over matter in the cure of disease, in the 
regulation of form and the materialization of 
objects by simple concentration of the mind. At 
first these manifestations were taken with a grain 
of salt and considered, in the main, as carried on 
under the most complex and surprising trickery. 
Undaunted by repeated fraudulent experiences 
the scientists, however, continued their work of 
investigation and, in time, developed such rigid 



Psychic Suggestions 73 

scrutiny that all possibility of deception was 
borne aside, and to-day there is no doubt as to 
the certainty of the phenomena. 

Before we digress at greater length, some un- 
derstanding should be reached as to the nature 
of psychic phenomena in general. The following 
ideas are particularly suggestive: remembering 
that every plane of Being — and we must rid our- 
selves of the idea that the earth plane is the 
only plane — and remembering that every plane of 
dimensional space is accordingly subjective to be- 
ings below it and objective to beings inhabiting it 
and to the beings above it, while it, in turn, must 
view the latter as subjective — then all planes, in 
respectivity, are first of all objective and as real 
in conscious experience as the earth plane. Now, 
any casual projection of experiences of objective 
planes becomes psychic and supernormal to beings 
dwelling on planes immediately subordinate. 
Here is an excellent illustration: We who live in 
three-dimensional space are subjective to beings 
living in two-dimensional space, while we, in turn, 
are objective to ourselves and to the material 
relations of this plane and objective to beings liv- 
ing on the plane just above us. Any natural 
objective experience of this earth plane, if pro- 
jected upon bi-dimensional space, will at once 
create a psychic, supernormal and subjective man- 



74 Practical Occultism 

ifestation to the beings inhabiting it, while we, 
who produce the phenomenon, readily understand 
its operations. Take a string and pull it length- 
wise through a wax tablet, then, while we would 
see a string visecting the tablet, the insect, or 
worm, with no understanding of height, would 
be conscious only of a moving point. Again, 
should the string be moved up and down in a 
stationary point in the tablet, the two-dimensional 
creature would see constantly changing particles 
of string, while we would see the entire string in 
all its height-measurements moving up and down. 
Similarly all psychic phenomena which affect us 
are respective in essence. Just as the amazed 
two-dimensional creature could not understand 
the phenomenon we projected into its sphere of 
consciousness, so we at first were startled and 
could not explain certain experiences which, until 
the present, were mysterious and dreaded; and 
just as the two-dimensional creature could not 
see the operators and operations of the phenome- 
non, being separated by the veils of dimension 
and material relationships, so we, likewise, at first 
fail to understand the operators and operations 
of psychic and subjective phenomena where we 
are concerned. Now, herein lies the entire es- 
sence and explanation of Spiritualism. In Spir- 
itualism, providing of course that scientific 



Psychic Suggestions 75 

scrutiny is observed, we witness any number of 
supernormal experiences — experiences which are 
suggestive of intelligent operations and intelli- 
gent operators who claim to live on planes im- 
mediately above us and who likewise claim to be 
disincarnate human beings who, by the transition 
of death, have been relegated to the plane im- 
mediately above us, the plane which is subjective 
to us just as we, who live in three-dimensional 
space, are subjective to bi-dimensional creatures. 
The phenomena recorded are, of course, subjec- 
tive to us, but owing to the persistent investiga- 
tion on our part and owing to the persistent en- 
deavors of the psychic beings above to make us 
understand, and to come into communication with 
us, these mysteries are gradually unravelling until, 
in a short time, we shall come face to face with 
those beings who claim to be the friends and 
relations in our earth-experience, and who try, 
with desperate energy, to show their survival of 
bodily dissolution and who try to impress on our 
consciousness the greater existence of Spiritual 
Verities in contradistinction to the passing rela- 
tionships of mortal life. Now, in regard to phe- 
nomena other than spiritualistic, in what is 
known as occult phenomena, in regard to super- 
normal experiences effected by enlightened per- 
sons on the earth-plane in processes akin to opera- 



76 Practical Occultism 

tions effected by psychic beings in the manifesta- 
tion of spiritualistic phenomena, they are due to 
the fact that these persons have become psychi- 
cally evolved to that point where they can indi- 
vidually employ the methods of the beings liv- 
ing in the psychic plane above us. They are sim- 
ply acquainted with the interactions of the mate- 
rial atoms and vibrations interblending our plane 
and the psychic plane above us, and with this 
knowledge they are enabled to produce these 
supernormal phenomena as readily as they affect 
the natural physical phenomena of daily experi- 
ence. 

So far we have explained the nature of ex- 
ternal psychic phenomena; now we must reach 
some conclusion concerning the nature of psychic 
phenomena of inner consciousness from simple 
telepathy and kindred experiences to the soul 
trance-ecstasies, visions and spiritual intuitions of 
the prophets and of the world's greatest mystics 
and of the world's sublimest sages, such as Jesus 
the Christ, Gotoma the Buddha, and Sri Rama- 
krishna of Calcutta. All these phenomena, from 
the minor psychic to the supreme soul-realiza- 
tions, are to be ascribed to the workings of sub- 
jective consciousness, either in its merest personal 
aspects or in that particular Aspect where the 
personal merges with the Impersonal and Univer- 



Psychic Suggestions 77 

sal, of a subjective consciousness unimpaired by 
physical impediment, and which, therefore, as is 
scientifically known, is capable of seeing, hearing, 
feeling, and otherwise cognizing sense impres- 
sions, experiences and relationships indefinitely 
placed either in time or in distance. 

When the scientists declared the authenticity of 
the phenomena, dissensions arose as to the ex- 
planatory physical causes which effected them. 
As is usual at the finding of new physical forces 
and manifestations there were as many explana- 
tions and hypotheses as there were scientists. 
Every imaginable, possible and impossible theory 
was set forth. Some ascribed them to unknown 
electrical influences, some to undiscovered undu- 
lations of vibratory force, some to inherent ani- 
mal magnetism, and some to peculiar relations 
between the mind and the finest conceivable parts 
of matter. All but the most simple and the most 
plausible explanations were given, but more re- 
cent inquiry has placed them to one side and rele- 
gated the cause to the very borders of spiritual- 
ism and occultism, so that to-day both stand upon 
a scientific basis and support their arguments 
from scientific principles and discoveries. Many 
of the investigators, who now incline toward the 
spiritualistic and occult explanations, a decade or 
two ago had no conception that their scientific 



7 8 Practical Occultism 

pursuit would lead them as far as it has. They 
expected some few physical discoveries, but al- 
most with one effort they unearthed the scientific 
foundation of the soul's immortality. Science 
stood" uncovered before the great spiritual proba- 
bilities with which it had come face to face, and 
now its exponents are laboring with reverence 
where once they discriminated with all the scrupu- 
lousness and caution with which science considers 
every new phenomenon. 

Naturally the greatest psychological changes 
followed and continued to follow in the wake of 
these things. To discredit them is now scientific 
* folly or the exhibition of an ignorance which rises 
against everything it fails to comprehend, stig- 
matizing it with a wholesale and meaningless de- 
nial or attempted ridicule. But there is that 
within all things affiliated with Truth which 
crushes the greatest opposing force and asserts its 
position in the face of seemingly impossible ob- 
stacles. The development of scientific tenets 
from occult and psychological phenomena was 
fought inch by inch with all desperateness, as it 
involved the most important religious alterations. 
The two combating forces in this struggle were 
the dogmatic religions and their constituents 
backed by the dogmatic scientists on one side, 
while on the other were the advanced philoso- 



Psychic Suggestions 79 

phers, religious teachers, and a large number of 
the foremost men of science. The outcome of 
the struggle is self-evident. Evolution will as- 
sert its way. 

The changes that these influences necessitated 
were first visible in a tremendous increase in the 
following of Spiritualism. They were again vis- 
ible in a tendency of the general public to follow 
psychological religions teaching the possibility of 
psychological and occult phenomena. Among 
these religions are Theosophy, different Oriental 
religions, variations of New Thought, and the 
scores of present-day cults. The greater inter- 
est, however, consequent upon psychological phe- 
nomena, was the claim of individual development 
along psychic lines, giving various soul-powers 
and soul-consciousness in different planes of exist- 
ence according to the development attained. 
The preaching of these things by Raja Yoga ex- 
ponents created the wildest sensation in this coun- 
try. Raja Yoga, in various forms, became the 
one thing which drew the thousands who thought 
that the redemption of religion and of theological 
facts lay along this line. Together with Raja 
Yoga were dispersed the metaphysical specula- 
tions concerning the reincarnation of the soul and 
similar doctrines. 

Now, if Life, like the omnipresent ether, is a 



80 Practical Occultism 

cosmic fundamentalism which cannot be reduced 
into the categories of material energies; if it is 
antecedent and unsubjected to the dissipations of 
motion and the integrations of inorganic matter; 
if Life is an essence of quantitative and qualita- 
tive constancy; if it is no unimportant, casual, 
momentary arrangement associated with certain 
relationships of matter, but utilizing these rela- 
tionships in variation with evolutionary experi- 
ence; if Life is^ something stable, unmodified by 
molecular changes — and these hypotheses are the 
latest deductions of science — then the claims of 
JRaja Yoga are true, then the necessary corollary 
of the soul's immortality follows and the corol- 
lary that the manifestation of Life in personal- 
ized consciousness must, at will and development, 
transcend the limitations of time, space, and other 
casual relationships to which the instrument of 
the soul — the body — is subjected by reason of its 
primary elemental, chemical and vegetal ele- 
mental composition. It also follows that, for 
these reasons, and that, with known methods, con- 
sciousness, independent of material impediments, 
is able to express itself in different phases and 
planes of Being and in different phases of con- 
scious experience. Here is the scientific basis 
upon which the possibility of psychic development 
and the otherwise seemingly wildest fancies of 



Psychic Suggestions 81 

occult possibilities rest. It is necessary to be 
technical, for without a technical, scientific inter- 
pretation, the story of psychistry would seem a 
story of improbabilities. 

Again, the entire system of Raja Yoga and 
all psychological phenomena have a common 
scientific foundation. They are immediately as- 
sociated with the scientific conceptions of the sen- 
sitiveness of the nervous system and its power of 
transmitting sense-impressions. It was discov- 
ered that the nervous system was the chief opera- 
tive factor in the manifestation of psychic facts, 
and that the nervous system responded with 
greater or less accuracy and greater or less sensi- 
tiveness in exact ratio to its normal condition or 
to its acquired development. There is the widest 
difference between the nervous system of one per- 
son and that of another. To illustrate, five 
persons feel a certain sensation. They each feel 
it in a different degree of sensitiveness. The 
most highly strung, whose nerves are more defi- 
nitely evolved, feels most intensely. He knows 
more of the emotion and its essence because his 
nerves are more highly strung, while the others 
feel the emotion in declining proportion, so that 
the last may only slightly feel what the first feels 
with intense sensitiveness. Again, a sensation 
may be experienced by a thousand persons, yet 



82 Practical Occultism 

each of these persons will experience the sensa- 
tion in a thousandfold, individually diverse varia- 
tion of definiteness, of intensity, of difference in 
sense-understanding and of other divergencies, so 
that the lowest evolved of the number may inter- 
pret in a diametrically different manner and with 
an entirely different activity of the mind the 
same sense-relation which might conterminously 
affect the highest evolved of the number. To 
the one the same sensation might afford intense 
pleasure, while to the other the same sensation 
would be painful in the extreme; in the one case 
the same condition might produce an indifferent 
State of the mind, while in the other the mental 
state would be decidedly happy and inspired. 
This difference is visible in tastes for music — one 
class cannot understand even in the slightest de- 
gree or appreciate grand opera, while popular 
strains arouse their greatest enthusiasm, and vice 
versa. Now, of course, all emotions are simply 
the reflex condition of the mind in response to 
sense-vibrations having, therefore, a nerve origin; 
in fact every activity of consciousness is accom- 
panied by nerve changes and discharges of nerve 
parts in nerve systems, and to the differences in 
structure, condition and activity of various per- 
sonal nervous systems, whether animal or human, 
are to be attributed the attractions and repulsions, 



Psychic Suggestions 83 

the love and the hatred and the other complexi- 
ties of life between beings and the differences of 
their instinctive, emotional or mental capacities. 

Where humanity is concerned it is the aim of 
evolution to develop the psychic life and psychic 
element and, for this reason, to render the nerv- 
ous system more and more complex in structure, 
for it is by the increased delicacy of the nervous 
system — the medium through which sense-impres- 
sions are received — that we, who live on the 
earth plane, can hope to sense the experiences 
which obtain on the psychic, subjective plane 
above us. As matters now stand it is impossible 
with the majority of human beings to receive 
these impressions because the average human 
nervous system is not yet so adapted, and because 
it is in closer proximity to the world of instinct 
rather than to the world of intellect and intuition. 

But the secret of occultism is, that the nervous 
system lies entirely within control, just as muscu- 
lar and structural development lie within the con- 
trol of the athlete, so that there is no reason why 
we should be barred from coming into individual- 
contact with the psychic plane if there is a desire 
to further inquiry into the occult. We can in- 
crease or decrease its susceptibilities beyond or 
beneath the normal state," thus rendering it pos- 
sible for the mind to perceive what is going on 



84 Practical Occultism 

beyond or beneath this limited normal condition 
and plane of consciousness. The line of psychic 
development strengthens the nervous system, and 
at the same time heightens its delicacy and sen- 
sitiveness to sense-impressions in proportion to 
the success attained. There is no limitation to 
the possibilities of this development. It is sim^ 
ply the anticipation of evolution and of its proc- 
esses of adjustment, for, in a not far distant 
period of time, the first stages of psycho-physio- 
logical progression will manifest themselves in 
the human form with a greater complexity of its 
functions and organs. The ear will have become 
so delicate in structure that it will respond to 
vibrations which, at the present state of its de- 
velopment, is impossible, save in the rare cases 
of psychics from the ordinary medium to the en- 
lightened sage, adept and saint. Vibrations of 
sound and light, and associations of matter, of 
which we are now unconscious from a sense point 
of view, but which the X-ray and instruments 
even more delicate prove exist, will then be trans- 
mitted by the nervous system. The normal state 
of the human nervous system renders us clair- 
voyant and clairaudient on this plane of exist- 
ence; therefore we can understand that its more 
complex development would make us clairvoyant 
and clairaudient on the plane just above us even 



Psychic Suggestions 85 

as the intelligences living immediately below our 
plane could see and hear us by the development 
of the transmitting organ of their sense and per- 
ceptive faculties. Increased development of the 
nervous system with increased powers of mental 
concentration and introspection would enable us 
to see and hear and even be fully conscious on 
planes of existence of which the loftiest imagina- 
tion could but dream. This is the whole secret 
of occult development. 

In this universe everything is a matter of vi- 
bration. The various manifestations of this vi- 
bration go under different names and forms, 
therefore we should remember that darkness and 
light are only words, for where we leave off see- 
ing on one end of a vibration of light, where it 
is darkness for us, there the mole, the bat, the 
owl, and many other creatures begin to see. 
Similarly the eagle and other beings of superior 
development of vision have only a normal light 
where we are blinded by an intense light even as 
our light of day is a blinding light to the owl. 
Light and darkness have, in themselves, no real- 
ity; they are simply modes of intensity of vibra- 
tion. The same is true of all material arrange- 
ments from the grossest to the finest; they are 
simply modes of vibration, having no reality only 
as they are variously interpreted in accordance 



86 Practical Occultism 

with the variating consciousness of beings living 
in variating phases and planes and in various 
time-relations and space-dimensions of the cos- 
mos. Now, could we psychologically attune the 
nervous system to varied vibrations, we could see 
and feel what is at present unseen and unfelt be- 
cause of inferiority of nerve development. This 
room would be full of new objects and new be- 
ings, and in that state of consciousness our sense 
of vision would likewise recognize new character- 
istics of our every-day surroundings, for we 
would sense them in the novelty of new dimen- 
sions and vibrations. We must get rid of the 
idea that on our side of life is activity of Being 
and on the invisible a void and non-existence. 
Science tells us that a void is impossible; that 
every atom is a center of sentiency, and higher 
spiritual teaching informs us that this diversified 
sentiency is an expression of a Cosmic, Infinite 
Sentiency of which Knowledge and Bliss are 
the essence. 

All that has been stated is unquestionably scien- 
tific, and greater scientific progress will discover 
greater psychological and spiritual truths. These 
things are forcibly suggestive, yet they are only 
the first principles of Raja Yoga, the science 
which unearths the foundation of the mind and 
nervous system, showing their interblending and 



Psychic Suggestions ' 87 

the methods by which an ultimate conscious con- 
trol of the entire body and mind may be possible. 
It explains methods by which the mind can turn 
into its very depths, as it were, and, by a process 
akin to what we unconsciously exercise in or- 
dinary memorizing, stir every experience the 
brain has recorded — even the slightest — into ac- 
tive, conscious vibration. The interpreters of 
this teaching assert that the mind can perform 
even a still more wonderful feat, that by a process 
of extreme introspection it can disclose soul- 
memories stretching far beyond our present ex- 
periences into past incarnations. Belief in rein- 
carnation is good, but a conscious knowledge of 
past life is "better. The sages say that there are 
processes by which we can remember past exist- 
ences and their experiences if we once arouse the 
depths of our minds. Memory is only a vibra- 
tion; a recurrence of the vibration which previ- 
ously had a more concrete form of expression, 
but which has become fine in potential existence. 
If enough of mental force is directed we can re- 
call the faintest experience of our lives. This 
is seen in the vision of great numbers of the 
dying before whom every event of their passing 
life is revealed. At the moment of death, how- 
ever, they have begun the psychic life, which 
enables them to perform a psychological feat 



88 Practical Occultism 

which, for our normal consciousness to do, would 
require long periods of psychic development. As 
memory, therefore, is only a recurrent vibration, 
that person who has attained the great heights 
of psychic development can cross the border-land 
of this life's limitations and become aware of 
the life, the relationships, the experiences, the 
merit and the demerit of the Past of his soul, and 
is thus enabled to exercise adjustment for its 
Future. 

The higher forms of psychological and occult 
phenomena embrace the miracles of the world's 
Saints, of their mystic experiences and their re- 
markable soul faculties and intuitions. The 
developed in the practice of Raja Yoga claim al- 
most unlimited power and unlimited possibilities. 
The great tasks which they say they can perform 
touch the uninformed hearer at first as being the 
most absurd superstition, but a little careful con- 
sideration and a knowledge of the latest scientific 
discoveries concerning matter and force explain 
their extreme probability. The wildest dream of 
Oriental imagination has its basis in a range of 
scientific facts which would startle the average 
reader. Max Miiller uttered a spiritual verity 
when he stated that imagination could "not exist 
only as it had a tremendous foundation in the 
facts of the universe. The revelations of science 



Psychic Suggestions 89 

and its conclusions savor of the romance of the 
"Arabian Nights," yet we know that they are 
true. What, for instance, is the occult declara- 
tion of the soul's immortality or the possibility 
of psychological phenomena in comparison with 
the statements of science as to the unthinkable 
distances in space; that a pebble thrown into the 
ocean necessitates an entire readjustment of its 
unthinkable myriads of particles; that certain 
magnetic needles on this earth cause a vibration 
in the sun, millions upon millions of miles away; 
that the vibrations of light travel with the incon- 
ceivable rapidity of about one hundred and eighty- 
six thousand miles a second; that we live at the 
bottom of an ocean of ether which presses against 
the surface of the earth billions of pounds to the 
square inch, or that what appears to the eye a 
solid concrete object is composed of minutest par- 
ticles constantly in flowing motion. 

These psychological truths and these semi- 
occult, semi-scientific discoveries, have impressed 
the greatest meaning on thousands of people 
whose religious beliefs were tottering when they 
were suddenly revived by the new psychology and 
the religions which represented it. The Oriental 
teachers, whose religion comprises these forms of 
religio-psychic beliefs, were sought out for assist- 
ance along the lines of psychic development. 



90 Practical Occultism 

They were idolized by an enthusiastic following. 
Everyone wanted to hear what they had to say, 
and at first the audiences which attended their 
lectures crowded the largest assembly places in 
the country. Books treating of psychological 
development were circulated broadcast through- 
out the land. Societies were established to pur- 
sue researches of the occult. Correspondingly 
hundreds of soi-disant psychologists and teachers 
of the Higher Truth, seeing the opportunity to 
profit financially by the popular enthusiasm, rose 
up in every third-rate city. They do not know 
one word of Sanskrit nor Pali, yet they willingly 
interpret the Vedas and Buddhist texts with so 
many dollars an hour fluency, and discourse on 
final metaphysical speculations without having 
heard the first principles of Vedanta or Buddhist 
logic. This is likewise true of our modern inter- 
preters of ancient Egyptian and Persian mysteries. 
For a considerable time this enthusiasm for 
the occult held the widest sway and attention— 
suddenly, however, it abated. It went as readily 
as it came, but this was of no surprise to the 
teachers; they apparently understood. It was one 
of those frequent spasmodic waves of public en- 
thusiasm which rise with portentous meaning and 
subside after the shortest-lived period. There 
was nothing stable about it. It was simply an 



Psychic Suggestions 91 

American phenomenon. When the Oriental phi- 
losophers came to this land, the majorities who 
welcomed them expected a miracle and a discourse 
on the occult for every courtesy offered. They ex- 
pected to witness the greatest psychic phenomena, 
and when none were displayed they grew im- 
patient. The consequence was, that the admiring 
thousands gave way to the small remnant com- 
posed of earnest, devoted followers. The Orien- 
tal teachers did not come to this land to perform 
miracles or to hold and dupe the masses. The 
message of a teacher is not to attract the mob, 
but to voice Truth. The Eastern philosophers 
came as the apostles of a new dispensation for 
which they were willing to undergo the uncer- 
tainty and possible danger attendant upon the 
task. They knew, from the first, that their suc- 
cess with the public was but temporary. They 
understood the psychological conditions which are 
always associated with innovating beliefs and 
their characteristics upon the superstitiously- 
inclined and novelty-seeking masses, and they 
foresaw that their temporary success would be 
followed by years of tedious, discouraging labor, 
with only minor results. 

From the very start the exponents of the 
higher teaching counselled their hearers to sup- 
press their desire for occult manifestation, stating 



92 Practical Occultism 

that all power would be theirs when the soul had 
awakened from its long dream of sense-life and 
the pursuit of desire. They stated that knowl- 
edge of any esoteric truth, or that mere psychic 
development did not mean religion in the higher 
sense. Naturally the interest waned. Those who 
came to witness occult phenomena and to learn 
the methods of occult development were dissatis- 
fied when their curiosities were not appeased. 

In the mind, of man there is stored up ghosts 
of ancestral superstitions which are resurrected at 
every new suggestion of the hidden and of the 
supernatural. There is an old proverb to the 
effect that the public in general readily falls prey 
to wholesale trickery and that it is willing and 
impatient to freely disburse at these occasions, and 
it appears that the most bitter experiences serve 
only to feed the fire of credulous curiosity. Ma- 
dame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, respectively, 
founder and president of the Theosophical So- 
ciety, openly confessed that at different instances 
they had fraudulently performed some of their 
most striking phenomena, yet this society has 
spread its branches into every important city. 
Similarly, in spite of numerous expositions of 
trickery in the cases of several prominent mediums 
and hundreds of others, less important, their fol- 
lowing has only been multiplied many times over. 



Psychic Suggestions 93 

The cause of their success, however, in the face 
of these conditions, is to be attributed to the in- 
herent truth of the philosophy and the possibility 
of the phenomena, which readily assert them- 
selves, when their following is imperilled. An- 
other reason for the decline in enthusiasm for the 
occult was the hard work before the student who 
desired even the slightest psychological develop- 
ment. Strict dieting, renunciation of this pleasure 
and that, earnest study, the stupendous task of 
attaining proper concentration and control of the 
mind, were thorns on the path and, for many, it 
was by far too narrow, but fortunately, by reason 
of these difficulties, it will never be desecrated. 
Only lovers of truth, only the persevering and 
courageous of soul, will be able to master the ob- 
stacles and achieve the desired development. 

It was believed that occult power could be had 
at the slightest effort, and those who think no 
farther than the purchase price, thought that 
money could secure them entree in the circles of 
the truly spiritual and occult who, in turn, would 
be glad to impart the greatest psychological and 
soul teachings. Their surprise was great when 
they were informed that no money could buy the 
teaching, for it is a matter not of buying and sell- 
ing, but of individual progression. The student 
has to familiarize himself with the methods and 



94 Practical Occultism 

then labor with almost infinite patience, with 
courage and painstaking ardor. The seeker after 
the real must be actuated by the same spirit as the 
scientific investigator. He must not be too credu- 
lous or too skeptical, but, adhering to his methods 
and practices, serve not a hair's breadth to the 
right or to the left. He must strike mental blow 
after blow until the task is solved and the wall 
of ignorance scattered, revealing the newer knowl- 
edge and the greater light. 

Mere curiosity will never achieve these things. 
Curiosity did not impel the great Giordano Bruno 
to further and declare his great scientific dis- 
coveries in the face of the combined opposition of 
his time, in the face of the narrowest dogmatism, 
and of condemnation and death. Curiosity can- 
not stand such tests. If the spirit of inquiry which 
guides the majority into occult investigation were 
put to the test of martyrdom and social ostracism, 
their number would be rarer. When your desire 
to know is so sincere, so unselfish that you are 
willing to give up all, even life and happiness, 
then spiritual truth will flow to you from the four 
quarters of space, and the Master will come to 
teach. Otherwise time is wasted. The trouble in 
America is, that people are curious, not sincerely 
desirous of knowledge ; they desire entertainment, 
not hard work, earnest persistence in searching 



Psychic Suggestions 95 

after higher things which involve self-sacrifice, ex- 
treme purity of conduct and patience and faith in 
the very teeth of failure and ridicule. Psychic de- 
velopment is not a matter of twenty-four hours 
or twenty-four months; it is a matter of work, 
work and work regardless of time, success or sac- 
rifice, for it is a part of soul-development; and, 
if we depend upon individual efforts to reach the 
goal, it takes not only long periods of time, but 
incarnations upon incarnations. All is in ratio to 
our desire and perseverance. Some attain the 
goal only after hundreds of lives of effort, while 
others reach the same height within a short 
period. 

As we are discussing occult phenomena many, 
unfamiliar with "occultism," will desire to know 
what it sets forth. Occultism is in no sense any- 
thing hidden, secret, or non-divulgible. Under 
this atmosphere it has unfortunately labored 
through the insinuations of mystery-mongers and 
would-be exponents. This knowledge has nothing 
in common with what might be inferred from the 
meaning of the word. It is only hidden or, 
rather, remains unmanifested, simply because the 
time with regard to the most of us has not yet 
arrived when we can realize these things through 
normal consciousness. But all knowledge and all 
power are in the depths of the soul, and when it 



96 Practical Occultism 

is once aroused from its self-hypnotization of 
weakness, death, sin, and relativity, there is noth- 
• ing it does not know, nothing it cannot perform, 
nothing of which it is not conscious. This knowl- 
edge has been transmitted by the few to the few; 
but now, with religious tolerance and broadmind- 
edness of spirit, it will be spread over the entire 
earth. Then alone can we hope for the great 
panacea of all evil, whether racial or individual. 
In this knowledge is embodied a consciousness 
and a conscious activity of the subjective mind. 

Science is now recognizing two minds, or, 
.better said, two aspects of the same mind, the 
former giving us material consciousness of the 
surroundings and relationships of this plane of 
life, for it is aware only of the present and re- 
mains subject to all the changes and limitations 
of bodily life and environment. The subjective 
mind is the larger aspect; it is free from material 
conditions and is not bound by material concep- 
tions of time; but, above all, it is the receptacle 
of soul-experiences, soul-power, and the true seat 
of sensation. Now, all occult phenomena are 
traceable to the workings of this higher mind. 
This mind has a consciousness of its own, so to 
speak, and its knowledge transcends the ordinary 
methods of perception and inference. This 
knowledge is truly soul-knowledge, and it mani- 



Psychic Suggestions 97 

fests when reason has reached its highest climax. 
This is the mystic religion when we are conscious 
of the things we formerly believed and intellec- 
tually recognized. The operations of the subjec- 
tive mind are visible in states of hypnosis and 
kindred psychic states, when the material mind 
and bodily organs are to a greater or less extent 
silenced into inactivity, thus giving the soul, the 
reincarnating subjective mentality an opportunity 
to display its intuitive faculties, its ramifications of 
personality, its ability to penetrate the thoughts 
of others, its powers of presaging the future, and 
its wide knowledge which the patient, in normal 
consciousness, could not possibly comprehend. 
This is the tale of occultism — the revelations and 
mysteries of the subjective mind. We want no 
modes of psychistry which are not scientifically 
founded, for what is scientifically false is spiritu- 
ally false, and our duty is to avoid and condemn. 
Any truth which has to be hidden or which can- 
not face the broad daylight of intellectual criti- 
cism and investigation is not occultism, but false- 
ness. The day of concealed knowledge is past, 
for the race has psychologically advanced where 
it can partially understand. According to the 
psychic development is the spirituality, the splen- 
dor of soul progress and possibilities. The soul, 
in its flight, comes in touch with greater and 



98 Practical Occultism 

greater souls and reveals its true nature to itself 
so that continued research may even lead to the 
ultimate Eternal Truth. 

This higher ideal of occultism assuredly failed 
of practical interpretation in this country. We 
have a general chase after the unusual with tem- 
porary practices of breathing and concentration, 
consequently, instead of having development, we 
have undevelopment and, only too frequently, 
neurasthenia. For the methods of psychological 
development, if employed spasmodically, with in- 
discrimination or under other improper condi- 
tions, will lead to hallucination and even insanity. 
The sages counsel against these dangers and say 
that, because of misdirected development and in- 
coherent practice, we have been burdened by the 
revelations, hallucinations and superstitions of 
religious reformers who have stumbled into 
psychic states and brought forth half-truths. 
Psychic practices should not be undertaken save 
under the direction of a teacher who has travelled 
the path, and is thoroughly familiar with the 
numerous and intricate psychological problems 
which are involved in Yoga, fixed concentration 
with deep breathing and other psychic conditions. 

The inquiry into the occult has the widest sep- 
arated motives. Many there are who follow 
every new interpreter of things occult and then, 



Psychic Suggestions 99 

when interest pales, chase the latest fad. Some 
there are who believe that occultism alone resides 
in the unfrequented regions of India or in the 
farthest recesses of Thibetan mountains. They 
should learn that occultism is not a matter of 
outward form, of respective places, of turbans 
and Oriental robes; they should remember that 
some of its greatest exponents may be found 
among the humblest followers of Christian teach- 
ing, and that the miracles and psychological 
phenomena, recorded by the Christian churches, 
have the same occult significance as those per- 
formed in the remote regions of the East. The 
visions of St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Anthony 
of Padua, and the miracles of the Apostles and 
the many saints of the church are as soul-inspiring 
and as spiritual in their origin as the visions and 
miracles of Oriental sages. "Mahatmas" can be 
found in the West as well as the East. Another 
class of occult devotees are those who seek a 
knowledge of spiritual and psychic power from 
motives of personal vanity, selfishness, and the 
"I want to know and to be more than you" spirit. 
These will never be privileged with this knowl- 
edge, for the reason that their selfish nature 
would employ it for personal, selfish purposes, 
not for spiritual progress, and rarely, if ever, for 
the benefit of their fellow-creatures. It is not 



ioo Practical Occultism 

that they are personally denied this knowledge; 
it is that the law of evolution does not reveal 
the new knowledge, the new experience, the new 
form and the new force until everything is 
adjusted and no error is possible. 

Until recently the world has either gaped in 
wonder at psychic and occult manifestations, or 
else violently persecuted those who practiced 
them. The former is true of the East, the latter 
of the West. There is also this difference, that 
the thinkers of the East were the scientific prac- 
titioners of psychic phenomena; they understand 
the psychology involved, and by long periods of 
racial and climatic convolutions, by individual 
concentration and constant psychic effort, they 
have developed such a sensitive, complex nerve 
structure that they are able to peer into the super- 
sensorial and witness the relationships between 
mind and body. The extreme opposite is true of 
Western occultism, barring, of course, religio- 
psychologieal phenomena, which occur, not at the 
instance of individual power, but at the invocation 
of the omnipotence of Spirit. There are a host 
of other phenomena, open to study, taking place 
in the early history of our own country as well 
as in European history, which were disconnected, 
spasmodic, haphazard and beyond the control of 
the individual. Those, so affected, were social 



Psychic Suggestions 101 

outcasts, accused of witch-craft and doomed to 
death. Rarely was science or philosophy brought 
to bear on these things, and exceptions, such as 
Nostradamus, Cagliostro, Paracelsus, and others, 
only confirmed the normal condition. Happily, 
however, these conditions have, for once and for 
all, passed, and now, through advanced religious 
attitudes and rapid scientific progress, we are at 
the threshold of an era foreshadowing the great- 
est psychological discoveries and consequent re- 
moval of many important distresses which affect 
the mind and otherwise hinder the development 
of the soul. Where the mind is concerned there 
is a particular reference to insanity and other 
mental and psychic disorders, of which so little is 
comparatively known at the present time. 

Like all other national demonstrations, the 
mania for the occult has outlived its enthusiasm, 
so that now little attention is given to its claims 
and possibilities. Of small importance, however, 
is a knowledge of the principles, practices and 
tenets of occultism to the general public, for what 
they must know will be transmitted to them 
by the investigations and discoveries of the 
scientists. The only important thing is, that 
we should never return to ancestral superstitions 
and the limitations of dead beliefs, but it is with- 
out doubt that the awakened intelligence of the 



102 Practical Occultism 

people, as a whole, has forever rendered this im- 
possible. Science and intelligence are, at the pres- 
ent time, the teachers of the people, while once 
they were instructed under the influence of super- 
stition and intellectual blindness. In the instance 
of occultism, as in all others, the people must be 
taught and believe, but as long as science develops 
higher forms of truth, and so long as their influ- 
ence is felt, little does it matter whether the pub- 
lic knows or does not know the occult or psycho- 
logical origin. 






THE SCIENCE AND SECRET OF 
HYPNOTISM 

Of one thing we are assured — the general 
public is taking a vital interest in the phenomena 
recorded by the "New Psychology." This inter- 
est has been largely furthered by the general 
press. Every day or so strange menta-psychical 
instances are recorded, instances presenting novel 
and phenomenal phases of mind. The only un- 
desirable feature of this interest is the fact that 
the public becomes acquainted with these things 
while the critical sense is, as yet, insufficiently de- 
veloped. This is why we have two undesirable 
aspects toward the new psychology and its phe- 
nomena ; the one is supercilious dilettanteism with 
supernatural mindedness, the other an unin- 
structed Philistinism which blinds its eyes to 
truth. For this reason the phenomena with which 
the public comes into contact are unsymmetrical 
and psychologically deformed. Thus half-truth 
with distorted attitudes obtains. The phenomena 
of which we speak are telepathy, or thought- 
transference, mesmerism, hypnotism, clairvoy- 

103 



104 Practical Occultism 

ance, apparitions, planchette and automatic writ- 
ing, trance and trance utterances. Of these the 
most discredited, yet the most credit-worthy, is 
indubitably that of hypnotism, that branch of the 
new psychology which furnishes adequate oppor- 
tunities for the study of the remarkable phases of 
mind and remarkable psychological and therapeu- 
tic phases. The reason why this science has not 
come into earlier consideration is owing to the 
materialistic and mechanical atmosphere in which 
we live. It is the conduct of our age to discredit 
and disregard anything incapable of being defi- 
. nitely and tangibly and materially characterized. 
It is only the external conditions, the practical and 
work-a-day conditions of commercial and ordinary 
life which is considered. All those higher intu- 
itions and aspirations, all those supernormal men- 
tal activities and feelings which belong to the 
category of the psychological are slighted as of 
little importance. The tide of Oriental mysticism, 
of modern Spiritualism and the supernormal 
teachings of the orthodox religions has stemmed 
the destructive growth of this materialistic an- 
tagonism to the psychological, and we are, there- 
fore, finding an increasing number who are 
particularly interested in the knowledge and con- 
clusions to which psychological phenomena lead. 
Hypnotism is derived from the Greek noun 



The Science and Secret of Hypnotism 105 

"hypnos," which means sleep. In the terminology 
of the psychological, however, hypnotism signifies 
those sleep-induced states having their source in 
suggestion or autosuggestion. It involves the 
description and classification of the phenomena 
and mentapsychical activities which these states 
present. Ridding ourselves for the moment of 
the strictly scientific interpretation and the 
supernormal methods of hypnotism, and confining 
ourselves to hypnotic phenomena inseparably con- 
sidered, we find them occurring at all ages and 
all times, and beyond the immediate discovery and 
classification of the phenomena into a separate 
science. 

The earliest historic ages record the presence 
of peculiar conditions of mind associated with cer- 
tain unusual conditions of the body, during which 
the subject was semi or wholly unconscious, and 
during which the sub-conscious mind was in play, 
giving evidences of superior knowledge and in- 
sight, of heightened vision and hearing, of 
prophecy, of discriminating advice, and of imperi- 
ous command. Persons so affected were set 
apart in the public opinion and were regarded as 
supernormal, and as under the especial regard of 
respective national deities were looked upon as 
the messengers of the latter. The ancient Egyp- 
tian and the Persian of pre-Cyrenian time had 



106 Practical Occultism 

their inspired magi; the Hebrew had his God- 
communicating prophets. The Greeks and the 
Romans had their oracles and sybils, the Druids 
and the ancient Germans their supernormally 
gifted priests, but particularly priestesses; the 
East Indians had their yogis; the Chinese and 
Japanese their psychologically developed religious 
teachers. The tide of these conditions continued 
throughout the Middle Ages and characterized 
themselves in the ecstasies of religious ascetics. 
It has continued in our modern time and empha- 
sized itself in Swedenborgian personalities. Then, 
a^so, we have the history of many superior men 
and women who were possessed of those phe- 
nomenal characteristics which are cited in the new 
psychology. Such were Socrates, Plato, and Joan 
of Arc. The average type Highlander had his 
"second sight." The medicine men of the Ameri- 
can Indians are said to have been gifted with a 
vision of future occurrences and therapeutic 
power, and a notable instance of the typification 
of these powers in the red man was that of Sit- 
ting Bull, said to have had a prophetic discern- 
ment of the approach and destruction of Custer's 
command. 

Thus we recognize the historically continuous 
citation of the remarkable phenomena revealed 
by modern psychological investigation. Previous 
to four-score years ago these phenomena were 



The Science and Secret of Hypnotism 107 

uncorrelated and unsynthesized and unclassified. 
People so affected were considered as possessed of 
supernatural powers and to have received this 
power from external and invisible intelligences, 
whether good or evil. 

The Development of Hypnotism 

In the early 70's of the eighteenth century a 
distinguished German physician-philosopher and 
occultist, Mesmer by name, came to some syn- 
thetic and co-ordinating conclusions with reference 
to the mentioned phenomena. He regarded them, 
not in a supernatural but in a supernormal man- 
ner. It was a very important demarcation, as it 
forever drew the line between the supernatural 
and the supernormal, and gave a scientific classifi- 
cation to otherwise dissortedly interpreted phe- 
nomena. From being superlatively considered as 
religious phenomena they were relegated to their 
proper psychological consideration. From being 
interpreted as having their specific origin in ex- 
ternal good or evil influences, they became con- 
sidered as originating in psycho-physical influences 
as yet little understood. The persistent investiga- 
tion and the particular findings of Mesmer 
resulted in some fortunate attitudes with refer- 
ence to the phenomena, yet he did not in any sense 
approximate the vital scientific conclusion of 



108 Practical Occultism 

to-day. Mesmer is only to be thanked for hav- 
ing separated the psychological from the super- 
stitious. His theory was that persons physically 
afflicted, particularly in a nervous sense, could be 
relieved by passing magnets over affected parts. 
Under this manipulation he discovered that many 
of his patients sank into a profound lethargic 
slumber during which somnambulistic phenomena 
occurred. Mesmer was not by any means the 
founder of modern hypnotic science, however. 
He was mainly interested in that newly discovered 
power through which disease could be cured. In- 
cidentally he stumbled on to the fact of the 
hypnotic sleep and the therapeutic value of it. 
Yet Mesmer was not given any great credence. 
The large body of scientists regarded his cures 
as so much quackery. 

The second exponent and explorer of hypnotic 
phenomena was a Suabian priest, Gassner, who 
used no magnets, but healed his patients by simple 
imposition of the hands. It was coming into con- 
tact with this priest that induced Mesmer to give 
up his idea of the value of magnets and come to 
an understanding that there was something else 
than material substance which affected the body. 
The curative influence was not considered to 
radiate from the curative agent, and the force was 
called "animal magnetism." The Marquis de 



The Science and Secret of Hypnotism 109 

Puysegur, the pupil of Mesmer, furthered his 
master's methods and more carefully observed the 
magnetic sleep which was induced. Instead of the 
passing of magnets over the body, the "Mesmer- 
ists," as the followers of Mesmer were called, 
impelled the hypnotic sleep by passes. The same 
phenomena as now manifest in hypnotic sleep 
were also manifested in those earlier days. These 
phenomena included somnambulism, or sleep 
walking, rigidity of body, anesthesia, or insensi- 
bility to pain, amnesia, or loss of memory as to 
what occurred during that sleep. The prac- 
titioners of these methods likewise discovered that 
their patients were amenable to suggestion and 
would follow out the spoken and sometimes the 
unspoken command. They also placed this sug- 
gestive possibility to practical use in the eradica- 
tion of vice and the education of nobler instincts. 
The period of the Mesmerists lasted until the 
middle of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, 
such able interpreters of the science as Petetin 
Husson, Dupotet Elliotson in France and Eng- 
land, and Esdaile in India, successfully carried on 
the work and discovered new working methods 
and new phenomenal phases of the formulating 
science. 

An English surgeon, Dr. Braid, who enjoyed 
a high repute, now turned his attention to the 



no Practical Occultism 

more and more interest-spreading phenomena. 
He it was who developed the idea that patients 
could be placed in the hypnotic sleep by methods 
other than those employed by the early Mes- 
merists. The persistent fixedness of the subject's 
eyes upon a brilliant object, he asserted, was as 
vital a means in calling the psychological phe- 
nomena to life as were the usual passes. It was 
he who first applied the term "hypnotism" to the 
sleeping state of the patient, and he called the 
phenomena "hypnotic phenomena." Braid's 
analysis of the physiological states summarized 
itself in what he considered a "profound nervous 
change." In spite of these zealous efforts, how- 
ever, Braid was not accorded scientific recogni- 
tion. Hypnotism still labored under the accusa- 
tion of quackery. This condition persisted until 
the opening year of the last quarter of the nine- 
teenth century. 

At that time the work of Mesmer and Braid 
drew the attention of several leading French phy- 
sicians; among them were Liebeaut and Azam, 
the former of Nancy, the other of Bordeaux. Yet, 
however, in spite of their patient scientific effort, 
in spite of their continuous pronounced observa- 
tions and their continuous discoveries, they did not 
draw that attention of the scientific world which 
they so earnestly desired. It was not as yet the 



The Science and Secret of Hypnotism in 

custom to openly assert any opinion concerning 
peculiar phenomena or existential conditions of 
hypnotism — it was not good scientific form. 

Then came the turning point. The world- 
famed Charcot appeared on the scene in 1887. 
This man was possibly the most far-famed phy- 
sician of France. His word on medical matters 
was final. His theories on medical conditions 
and values were the principles of the leading 
medical schools of the nation. His great work 
and eminent scientific research and discovery in 
the realm of hypnotic forces and influences were 
the result of an accident. Charcot was appointed 
one of a committee of three to study the effect 
of metallic spheres on the psychical element of 
hysteria. It was in this casual work that he re- 
discovered the findings of Mesmer and Braid. 
The wards of the La Salpetriere clinic became the 
greatest psychological center in Europe and drew 
the attention of the French Academy. Charcot 
was well-pleased with the specific discovery of his 
specific task. Apart from the immediate dis- 
covery of the influence of metallic disks in the 
treatment of hysteria, he came into relation with 
those same peculiar sleep states and somnambu- 
listic phenomena which were noted by the Mesmer 
school. Charcot was a man of eminent scientific 
sincerity. Whatever he discovered in his own 



112 Practical Occultism 

private avocation that he voiced. He now gave 
to the world the knowledge of his experience in 
psychological matters. The word of Charcot had 
the greatest scientific value, consequently the de- 
sire for investigation was advanced by foremost 
thinkers. The scientific world now seriously con- 
sidered what it formerly had rejected as quackery. 
Hypnotism was now established. 

In spite of his great understanding, however, 
Charcot was blind to some very important facts 
as to the nature and activity of hypnotism. For 
the greater part his new work led him into an 
affiliation with hysteric or otherwise nervously 
disordered patients, and upon these he experi- 
mented with some satisfactory, but equally with 
other unsatisfactory results. It was he who in- 
troduced what is known in the terminology of the 
psychological as "massive stimulation." This 
expression found manifestation in sudden excita- 
tion of the patient's concentrated attention. 
After having gained complete control over the 
subject, through suggestive influences, Charcot, 
or his pupils, would shock the mind by the sudden 
sounding of a concealed gong, or otherwise by 
the sudden flashing of a powerful light. This 
shock always served to throw the patient into a 
cataleptic trance. From this state of lethargy 
somnambulism and even more alert states would 



The Science and Secret of Hypnotism 113 

follow. In the modern interpretation, however, 
this "massive stimulation" is emphatically re- 
proved. It is by excitatory stimulation that ner- 
vous persons have been brought to their affliction, 
and to specialize this stimulation into a powerful 
nervous shock is exceedingly undesirable. 

Charcot's work was essentially therapeutic. 
No attention was as yet given to the peculiar psy- 
chological phenomena which associated them- 
selves with the hypnotic sleep. In spite, however, 
of his sincere attitude and of his tremendous re- 
search, Charcot has left no great or valued im- 
press on the science of hypnotism. He is only 
to be honored by reason of the fact that his great 
prestige gave weight and importance to hypno- 
tism in the scientific world. 

Interest was now specially furthered in the 
domain of research. Now came the real deter- 
mining scientist, Professor Bernheim, the greatest 
psycho-physician of his time. He was the dis- 
coverer of the extremely important fact, the fact 
that persons with well-ordered nerves were as 
amenable to suggestion as nervously disordered 
persons. He removed the origin, condition and 
activity of psychical states from the super- 
naturally suggestive and the little-understood and 
placed them in scientific category. He it was who 
discovered the elemental factor in all psychic ac- 



>' 



ii4 Practical Occultism 

tivity, and he called that factor by the name it 
has ever since had, "suggestion." Suggestion, he 
maintained, was the conditioning factor in bring- 
ing about hypnotic sleep and the later somnambu- 
listic and psychical phenomena. He it was who, 
also, first paid attention to the phenomena in- 
volved in hypnotic states. He, moreover, claimed 
that the hypnotic sleep differed in no wise from 
the normal sleep, and that no foreign influence, 
element or magnetism was the inducing factor of 
psychic states. He claimed that all was to be 
attributed to the little understood, the tremendous 
power and influence of suggestion. This sugges- 
tion was not something foreign to the mind; it 
was an attribute of the mind itself. The hypno- 
tist is only the agent, who, by his influence, places 
the patient in such a state that he can use his 
otherwise latent faculty for therapeutic and other 
purposes. A far headway, pregnant with vast 
and meaningful monitions culminated with Bern- 
heim, and since other psychologists of the James, 
Hyslop and Mitchell type have accentuated the 
progressive expansion of this headway. 

Thus we distinguish four separate and essential 
climaxes in the evolution of hypnotism. The first, 
that of the early Mesmerists; the second, that of 
Braid; the third, that of Charcot and the Paris 
school which represented his beliefs; fourth, the 



The Science and Secret of Hypnotism 115 

period beginning with the investigations of Bern- 
heim until the present, which we might speak of 
as the beginning of a fifth, because of the momen- 
tous discovery as to the source and explanation 
of the psychological phenomena manifest both 
within and without the province of hypnotism. 

The Methods of Hypnotic Therapeutics 

Were you at the psychological clinic of the 
Nancy School for Psychological Investigation, or 
were you at any other great psychological clinic 
apart from that made famous by Bernheim, you 
would note those peculiar methods employed in 
hypnotization. The first step taken is the absorp- 
tion of the subject's attention. In most cases this 
is an easy matter. In frequent cases it is not. 
Most of the visitors to psychological clinics are 
hysterics or nervously affected persons. Many 
of the visitors complain of continual headaches, 
lack of sleep, nervousness. They are generally 
believers in the efficacy of hypnotic assistance and 
thus are fit subjects for treatment. The prac- 
titioner cautions the subject to fix attention on a 
given point. Soon the willingness of the subject 
to be hypnotized asserts itself. The eyelids 
quiver and droop, the practitioner then closes 
them for a moment and sleep intervenes. He 



n6 Practical Occultism 

then employs a number of passes above and about 
the body, and then, after the patient has had fif- 
teen or twenty minutes' sleep, he awakens the sub- 
ject. The awakening is generally brought about 
by a quick, prompt command. The awakened 
patient asserts freedom from any trouble and as 
much renewed vigor as though an entire night 
had been spent in most invigorating sleep. In 
this process the suggestion of the practitioner has 
enabled the subject to employ individual sugges- 
tive faculty, and this faculty has a powerful thera- 
peutic value and immediately quiets the nerves. 
•Practitioners of yoga claim that five minutes of 
such psychological quiet and repose is capable of 
adjusting most tired and strained conditions of 
the body. They also say that whenever any cures 
are performed by psychological process it is to be 
accredited to the working of one of the principle 
phases of this latent faculty. 

Physio-Psychical Conditions 

All hypnotic states are accompanied by peculiar 
conditions of the body. The pulse, respiration 
and temperature, however, remain unchanged. 
They are amenable to suggestion. At times the 
pulse or temperature may be respectively height- 
ened or reduced, but all these pre-hypnotic physi- 



The Science and Secret of Hypnotism 117 

cal conditions can be regulated to the normal 
state. Peculiar conditions obtain in anaesthesia 
and catalepsy. The hypnotic patient is liable to 
the suggestion of anaesthesia, that is, it may be 
suggested that the body will not feel pain and this 
will occur. The skin may be pricked, and other 
sense-inducing factors be applied, but the patient 
remains insensible to their activity. It is known 
that under the anaesthetic condition of hypnosis 
serious surgical operations may be performed 
without the slightest suffering. Catalepsy is a 
strange rigidity of the body which obtains when 
the subject has entered deep sleeping states. In 
this condition any of the limbs may be placed in 
a particular, even unusual position and they will 
stay fixed. If the practitioner should pull down 
an outstretched arm it would immediately spring 
back to its condition. 

There are two notable stages in the hypnotic 
process. First, the lethargic state; second, the 
alert state. There are degrees in each; the for- 
mer may range from mere drowsiness to deep 
sleep. The latter may range from the simplest 
manifestations of somnambulism to extended 
writing, conversation or work which may be sug- 
gested by the practitioner. What is peculiar in 
the hypnotic processes is the loss of memory on 
the part of the patient in regard to what trans- 



1 1 8 Practical Occultism 

pires during sleep. The awakening of the subject 
may be regulated from immediate obedience to 
the sudden command of the practitioner to a com- 
mand obeyable in five or ten minutes or in an 
indefinite period of time. In the former case 
there is no mystery ; in the latter there is. It im- 
plies that the subject has a sub-conscious concep- 
tion of time. This same condition occurs when 
an individual through auto-suggestions awakens 
at any given time of the night or morning. He 
who has a definite conception of time values will 
awaken at the time appointed, whether by him- 
self or at the suggestion of the practitioner. He 
who has no definite conception of time value, if 
intended to awaken at a given time through auto- 
suggestion, will be disturbed by repeated awaken- 
ings. In the case of the hypnotic patient, there 
will be sporadic attempts at the regaining of self- 
consciousness, and in both cases the subject will 
probably awaken some minutes before or after 
the time set. 

Another strange psychological fact accompany- 
ing hypnotic direction is post-hypnotic suggestion. 
In this instance the patient is told to perform 
some act on awakening, or after some indefinite 
period has elapsed. It is also suggested that he 
have no cognizance of the plan. This suggestion 
is invariably carried out, and at many times with 



The Science and Secret of Hypnotism 119 

marvelous exactitude. Space prevents the inter- 
polation of instances, but the reader may be re- 
ferred to any of the authorized works on 
psychology. These post-hypnotic suggestions 
may be very complex, and in this sense are un- 
usual phenomena. Then there is the unusual tele- 
pathic condition between practitioner and patient. 
This may be exceptionally pronounced. As an 
example, a practitioner and an unbiased observer 
may be in one room, while the patient and another 
unbiased observer may be in a room a hundred 
feet distant. In the experiment the practitioner 
will scratch his hand with a pin and the sensation 
will be experienced by the patient, which shows 
the wonderful telepathic union and a suggestive 
of clairvoyance and clairaudience which are the 
specialized senses of the tactual sense. This 
rapport may be carried to an unusual degree. In- 
cidentally these thoughts give rise to the oddities 
of the so-termed "willing game." Here the sen- 
sitive is sent from the room and agrees to be 
impressed with the collectively concentrative wish 
of those who remain within the room to perform 
some act, such as raising a certain piece of china 
off the table. In a large percentage of instances 
the feat is carried out. There are cases, how- 
ever, where such conduct becomes associated with 
unusual psychic conditions, as example, nervous 



120 Practical Occultism 

agitation, excitement, possible faintness, even 
syncope. 

The Drift of the New Psychology 

We are only on the borderland of psychological 
discovery. Further research will certainly bring 
the remaining shadows of psychological inquiry 
into definite scientific light. We will come to un- 
derstand the extraordinary relationship between 
practitioner and subject; we will come to under- 
stand the meaning, origin, process of activity and 
essence of that indescribable something that we 
call suggestion. At all events, inquiry into psychi- 
cal affairs has resulted in a radical change of our 
conceptions of the mind and soul, which shows 
us that the mind is its own conditioning factor. 
It shows that it possesses indefinite therapeutic 
power. It shows us that latent within the sub- 
conscious are faculties and qualities of mind far 
above the normal, which later evolution will ren- 
der normal, and which can even now be put into 
practice by the wholesome influence of hypnotism. 
It reveals to us the marvelous depths and dignity 
of the human mind, and is suggestive of the truth 
of those spiritual dogmas which appertain to the 
existence and immortality of the soul, and kindred 
dogmas. 



The Science and Secret of Hypnotism 121 

We are on the threshold of eventful discoveries 
which will ultimately have an important moral 
bearing, but the greatest of all revelations which 
the new psychology imparts is that of the ethical 
value of suggestion. Suggestion is everything. It 
is the dominating mental force which gives value 
and existence to all perceptible phenomena. All 
nature is but one vast external suggestion upon 
which the mind centers itself in a myriad mani- 
foldness. This leads us to the value of auto- 
suggestion and of the freedom of the mind in 
carrying out the mandates it pleases to give. 
Auto-suggestion is a self-hypnotization in which 
the mind is developed beyond its normal percep- 
tion and range of thought. And auto-suggestion 
is specifically defined as the highest manifestation 
of the human will. 

True it is that by the evolution of auto-sugges- 
tion we become most powerful, the regulators of 
our bodily, mental and psychical sanity and de- 
velopment, the creators and masters of destiny. 



CLAIRVOYANCE 

One may doubt the theory of clairvoyance at 
first hearing, but he cannot doubt the hyper- 
acuteness and varying in degree of normal per- 
ception. Normal vision is based on many physi- 
cal circumstances and thus enjoys a wide scale 
of variation. Some persons are endowed with 
limited vision only, while others, like the Ameri- 
can Indian or the frontiersman, are possessed of 
almost supernormal sight, so keenly developed 
beyond the average is this particular sense. The 
broad variableness of this sense is again manifest 
in the unusual distinguishing faculty of the Cash- 
mere girls. Where the European senses but the 
primary colors, these people are capable of dis- 
tinguishing two or three hundred shades beyond 
the keenest perception of even the Scotch, noted 
for their high development of vision. It can 
hardly be said that there is a normal average of 
degree of sight. Almost every person sees differ- 
ently and in his respectively personal sense. No 
two ever see the same object in the same degree 
of clearness, interpretation, intensity, keenness 

122 



Clairvoyance 123 

and measurement. It is ever in the ratio of the 
more or less extended. 

There are various physical conditions which 
may alter the range and field of sight, for ex- 
ample, certain overwrought nerve centers may 
entirely change the quality of vision. The devia- 
tion from the normal is often noticeably special- 
ized. Long illness will either sharpen to a point 
of particular intensity or dull the acuteness of 
vision. Sometimes this sense may be confused 
with other senses. As a bearing illustration, we 
have the case of a woman who had become ex- 
tremely sensitive by reason of continued illness. 
Her supernormal perception was frequently ex- 
hibited, and, as a test, her physician rolled an 
old-fashioned copper cent into several coverings 
of tissue paper and then placed it in the patient's 
hand. After an inconsequential conversation of 
five or more minutes the patient said: "I wonder 
what you are now doing with me." Then she 
suddenly made a wry face with the remark: "I 
know what it is; you have put a nasty piece of 
copper in my hand." As she made the remark 
she also commenced to wipe her mouth with her 
handkerchief as if to eject some foreign unpleas- 
ant substance. In other words, her sense of taste 
had been confused with her sense of sight. The 
coppery emanations from the coin had entered 



124 Practical Occultism 

her system and, reaching the tongue, gave the un- 
pleasant and supernormal taste. This is not a 
degenerated form of perception. If we remem- 
ber that the other senses have developed from 
the sense of touch, we can understand how, under 
certain abnormal physical states, the sense of sight 
which has developed from the sense of touch may 
become commingled with it in an indistinguishable 
manner. 

It is very appropriate to call to mind the 
peculiar results and perceptions of certain 
psychics who supernormally perceive not so much 
with a sense of sight as by a sense, so to speak, 
of touch. They, in a way, feel the presence 
rather than see it. They are rather in a tactual 
sense conscious of the specific descriptive charac- 
teristics of the presence than conscious by any 
process of vision. They use the words "I see." 
They should say: "I am conscious of certain 
phases of description of the person who is pres- 
ent." 

The variableness of degree in the normal sight 
and the peculiar supernormality of this sense un- 
der abnormal bodily conditions infers the exist- 
ence of sight beyond the average, a sight more 
evolved and more comprehensive because it more 
thoroughly distinguishes and is more thoroughly 
aware of the objects of our daily surroundings 



Clairvoyance 125 

as well as conscious of perceptions beyond the 
reach of the earth-plane. 

This implies that sight is not a matter of bodily 
adjustment to physical organs. The soul pos- 
sesses the faculty of seeing without the physical 
organs. Yet under the average, the organs are 
the instruments for vision on this plane. They 
are not absolutely controlled or limited by them, 
however. As was inferred, certain dissociation 
of nerve centers or a certain effervescence of the 
sensorium may affect the sense of sight to a super- 
normal degree, and, what is particularly signifi- 
cant, to a wider activity and freedom. Instead 
of inhibiting the normal activity of vision as 
would naturally be expected, these hypersensitive 
circumstances of the brain enlarge it. 

Clairvoyance is a branch of telaesthesia, i.e., 
exteriorization of the senses, so that they may go 
beyond the boundaries of the body's immediate 
periphery and become cognizant of impression 
remotely placed either in time or distance. In- 
stances of the telaesthetic phenomena have not 
been wanting and have attracted the especial 
attention and observation of the English Society 
for Psychical Research. Most astounding phe- 
nomena have been recorded which strike the 
reader, unfamiliar with the inner psychic working 
forces, as preternatural, if not superstitious. 



126 Practical Occultism 

The possession of the clairvoyant faculty is in 
no way significant of hysteria or distressed 
nervous condition. As a matter of fact, some of 
the most self-possessed and nervously-controlled 
characters with whom history acquaints us have 
been clairvoyant. The older school of psycholo- 
gists, as an instance, believed that the Saint Joan 
of Arc was hysteric. Investigation, however, has 
substantiated the common-sense idea that a hys- 
teric is incompetent to retain poise on a battlefield 
and be leader of armies. The Saint was informed 
of her great mission by superhuman intelligences 
who spoke to her in the clairaudient sense and 
manifested themselves to her clairvoyant vision. 
The great philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, far- 
famed and influential in his time, is accredited 
with having clairvoyantly seen the murder of the 
Emperor Domitian. It is said he was standing 
in his pulpit preaching when suddenly he bowed 
his head upon the rest and in a moment later 
shouted : ''Strike ! Strike the tyrant I" The sur- 
prise of the people caused him to explain his 
vision. It tallied with the actual occurrence. 
Certainly the founder of the Alexandrian school 
of pre-Neo-Platonists cannot be classed as a hys- 
teric. Swedenborg, the founder of his celebrated 
spiritual philosophy, cannot be termed nervously 
disordered. 



Clairvoyance 127 

Clairvoyant vision was known to the ancients. 
The classical historians of Greece and Rome men- 
tion numbers of cases. Cicero speaks of them. 
The visions of the augurs of Rome and the sibyls 
of Greece possessed the clairvoyant faculty. The 
prophetesses of Endor were renowned for their 
telaesthetic sight. This phase of the subject need 
not be emphasized, however, in view of the fact 
that the average reader is individually familiar 
with private and credit-worthy cases. 

The literary and plastic arts may be said to be 
intimately associated with the clairvoyant sense. 
The poet historian or writer of romance who 
creates his theme from the actualities of history, 
to be accurate in his view and faithful in his de- 
scription of scene or character, must in some sense 
be in a clairvoyantly intuitive association with the 
occurrences and personalities of which he speaks. 
The Secret Doctrine tells us that all events are 
treasured upon the astral records. If we pos- 
sessed the faculty we could decipher every shadow 
that was ever traced upon a stone, for it is a fact 
scientifically recognized that each passing object 
indelibly paints its shadow even on rock. Sim- 
ilarly, every thought, word or deed is penciled on 
the canvas of the universe, and, if one can trans- 
late his consciousness to any given period of time 
or any particular locality, he can come into direct 



128 Practical Occultism 

consciousness with what the past has wrought. 
This sense is not alone confined to the past. It 
is equally true of the future. All things occur 
by law. They exhibit themselves in a regular and 
law-abiding order. They are foreshadowed and 
can be seen with the clairvoyant vision. There- 
fore, the poet, historian and similar workers, 
especially if their works are treasured as master- 
pieces, were assuredly in touch with the experi- 
ences they cite. The artist, too, is possessed of 
the clairvoyant vision. He subconsciously sees 
the image he will paint or sculpture. 
• All these things similarly appertain to the 
faculty of clairvoyance. The possession of these 
faculties is a rare occurrence. Yet in every indi- 
vidual are these faculties stored in latency. They 
will evolve at some particular period in the evo- 
lution of the individual. In fact, they will be the 
common property of the race at large when it 
has reached several degrees of higher develop- 
ment. They will be common property even as 
ordinary sight and hearing were at one time ex- 
ceptional, but are at present normal. 

Those who would have further development of 
their psychic senses are cautioned to do so under 
proper psychological direction. They should seek 
out a teacher acquainted with the methods of de- 



Clairvoyance 129 

velopment. The danger is in going to such who 
pose as knowers of psychological development 
and who, for a paltry pittance, imperil the psychic 
welfare of their clients. 



, AURAS AND INFLUENCES 

There lingers about each person, about each 
creature or object even, a peculiar condition, an 
"atmosphere," so to speak, charged with the 
many, multiple expressions of thought, feeling and 
other individual characteristics which crowd our 
lives. It is ever present, ever vibrating the per- 
sonalisms of us unto others, radiating various 
impressions which attract or repel according as 
the susceptibilities of persons, circumstances or 
things blend or do not blend with our own. 
Though intangible and imperceptible to the senses, 
its influence is tremendous in deciding sympathies 
or antipathies. You may notice its workings in 
almost every activity of daily life. You are in- 
troduced to a new acquaintance and find that in- 
stantaneously you are drawn or repelled according 
as your experience varies. No words other than 
those of formal courtesy have been exchanged; no 
ideas or idiosyncrasies of character have been 
exchanged or revealed; there is absolutely noth- 
ing which you can rationally perceive as a cause 
for the spontaneity of affection or lack of sym- 
pathy as the case may be. You have made a new 

130 



Auras and Influences 131 

friend or have become exceedingly indifferent to 
the new person in your life, and if asked why 
you have taken this or that attitude, you could 
not under any circumstance explain yourself. 
What is the working factor in the suddenness of 
your emotions? Again, you may come upon some 
new scene or enter some strange house and with- 
out any intelligence in the matter you like or dis- 
like the newness of your surrounding. There is 
no rational answer you could make to a query 
concerning your feelings, yet you have them and 
they are as decided in your consciousness as that 
fire burns or flowers bloom. Your sense in these 
things is purely intuitional. It is as much a psychic 
characterization as the disclosure of your name or 
the events of your life by a psychiatrist — for it is 
from the stuff of intuition that all psychic knowl- 
edge proceeds. Again in the case of persons you 
have known for lengths of time, persons with 
whose natures your associations have sensitized 
you — you may walk in the room and without any 
understanding in words or specific glances, and so 
forth, you will find yourself knowing just how they 
feel. You will sense if something has gone wrong, 
or find yourself without cause elated by the mere 
presence. 

The possibilities of these "atmospheres" may 
be seen in the conditions of places. Some places 



132 Practical Occultism 

have soft, harmonizing influences, some sombre 
and awe-inspiring, some places have exhilarating 
influences, some forcibly repellant and nauseating. 
You have your churches, your cemeteries, your 
historic ruins, your theatres and places of amuse- 
ment, your asylums, your places of filth and moral 
discrepancies. There is no language, no immedi- 
ate sense relations that these places convey. They 
are purely associative with the nature and essence 
of places. They are simple influences which ac- 
custom themselves in harmony with different types 
of character. 

• These influences may be compared to the mag- 
netic motions of loadstones; they may be com- 
pared to the vibrations of odor or heat. They 
are composed of fine fibres of matter and move 
with the finest vibrations of force. They cannot 
be touched or seen yet, though silent and obscure, 
they make themselves felt with binding and con- 
trolling force. These comparisons are only sug- 
gestive, for the nature of influences is something 
indescribable. Like all hidden forces they modu- 
late in similar and dissimilar quantities respond- 
ing or antagonizing each other, just as the tangible 
concrete elements of the chemist vibrate in har- 
mony or inharmony. And as our whole natures 
are surrounded and radiate these influences there 
is a correspondence between our likes and dis- 



Auras and Influences 133 

likes of people and surroundings as between the 
attraction and repulsions of chemical compounds. 

Influences proceed from individual centers and 
bear certain relations to centers external to them- 
selves. Just as the magnet controls certain par- 
ticles of matter with which it bears relation, so the 
magnetic currents, the influences we emit range 
out of our personal environment and affect the 
lives and thoughts of others, and even the condi- 
tions of the places and objects about us. If the 
influences are powerful enough they can change 
and direct conditions. If the influences are weak 
and ill-directed, they fall before stronger and 
direct influences. In this connection rises the idea 
of personal magnetism and the exercise of the 
control of one mind over another. 

Personal magnetism is the synonym for forcible 
influences, and hypnotism and control of others, 
synonyms for power of stronger over weaker and 
undeveloped influences. 

In the opening paragraph it was stated that the 
atmospheres or auras and the influences of which 
they are composed are the expression of thoughts 
and feelings and of other personalisms. The 
thought that immediately presents itself for con- 
centration is the tremendous necessity of render- 
ing ourselves positive in thought, positive in emo- 
tion, positive and well-governed in will, for in this 



134 Practical Occultism 

manner we become centers of power, of personal 
magnetism; in this manner we become less sus- 
ceptible to stray, uncontrolled influences, less sus- 
ceptible to vibrations of evil, of pessimism, and 
of undesirable personal qualities of others which 
are taken on by sensitive persons unable to con- 
tain their feelings in a self-poised fashion. There 
is the admonition to train our wills to such defi- 
niteness and invariableness of decision that no 
person or condition can vampirize on the life- 
forces of the aura which envelops us, on its deli- 
cacy of condition or on its personal qualities. 
Thereby we become self-dependent and original; 
we become forces of good, and our influences, 
though never expressed in language, will make the 
world better and more evolved. Time and dis- 
tance have no effect on the working of influences, 
for they operate as deep and as far as the very 
gravitative force which binds in sympathy the 
farthest suns with our own. Should you retire to 
a cave remote as possible from human life, the 
influences of your thought and life would reach 
out and mirage themselves in a thousand-fold 
distance and in a thousand-fold manner. 

In conclusion, every thought of good, every 
good emotion, every divine aspiration, every 
glorious hope, every kind intention shall find its 
way through the influence you radiate, and though 



Auras and Influences 135 

the world never crown your efforts or your life, 
your obscure work has in many places and in many 
seasons uplifted the world. For similarly as a 
pebble cast into the ocean displaces and readjusts 
each individual particle of the great sea, so every 
noble thought and influence shadowed by the soul 
in the great ocean of Life modulates the whole 
into a better expression. 



FATE AND ASTROLOGY 

It has often been questioned whether humanity 
is controlled by Fate or whether there is such a 
thing as freedom of will. The problem has been 
agitated from the beginning of philosophic specu- 
lation. Great thinkers of different philosophical 
systems have reasoned and had their say, but per- 
haps the greatest understanding of this problem 
has been brought about by the world's eminent 
astrologers. 

In an article of this kind it is impossible to in- 
troduce the first principles of astrology. It is 
conceded by a majority of the thinkers of the 
present day that the personal experiences of indi- 
viduals are influenced by stellar motions and as- 
pects. It has been observed that the chemical, 
mineral and vegetable kingdoms are governed, to 
a greater or less extent, by stellar conditions. 
Science, continuing further research, has arrived 
at the specific conclusion that the animal and hu- 
man world are likewise affected by the astrologi- 
cal. We are considering astrology only in rela- 
tion to the freedom of the personal will, granting 

136 



Fate and Astrology 137 

that the reader is acquainted with the main essen- 
tials of the science. 

The problem and the significance of the inter- 
relation of Fate and astrology has as yet never 
been solved to the satisfaction of the thinking 
public as such. Generally speaking, however, all 
philosophical systems maintain the freedom of the 
will, at least in a relative sense, but they have 
differed in their interpretation as to the particu- 
lars which determine that freedom. In fact, the 
majority of men have reasoned themselves into 
a spacial acceptance of individual freedom, yet in 
spite of ratiocination there has been the overhang- 
ing doubt — a doubt which has been a serious 
stumbling block, not only in a philosophical sense, 
but also in a religious sense. So much depends on 
the attitude taken toward this problem. If we 
are absolutely and hopelessly controlled by an 
inevitable Fate, then all our effort, our aspiration, 
our morality, our belief and expression of free- 
dom of will, of personal freedom, is a variegated 
insult to the racial intelligence. On the contrary, 
if we possess freedom of will, if personal assert- 
iveness may overcome the barriers of Fate, if we 
may successfully combat the inhibitions of the in- 
evitable, then, indeed, is there a nobility in the 
struggle of the human soul. This problem is the 
most vital of all the problems which confront the 



138 Practical Occultism 

intelligence of man, and it is doubtful whether 
mere argument will ever successfully solve the 
enigma. But, apart from what philosophy has to 
say, the leaders of astrological science claim that 
they have unravelled this intricacy to a greater 
clarity than any of the speculative systems. They 
say that they have arrived at their conclusions by 
mathematical and astronomical calculations rather 
than by unaided metaphysics. 

To come to a clearer understanding we must 
first of all define Fate and Free Will. Fate is 
considered as a cosmic principle which binds and 
controls the entire universe and, humanly con- 
sidered, binds the will of man by producing cer- 
tain fixed, unalterable and inevitable circum- 
stances. Such circumstances are accidents, hap- 
hazarded events, unlooked-for calamities and 
similar events, apparently beyond any individual 
control. It is considered as something which ren- 
ders man more of an automaton than an independ- 
ent free agent, and as the motive principle which 
compels to every thought, act and variation of 
consciousness. Freedom of Will is the decided 
opposite. It is the inherent power believed in by 
man himself by which his future may be directed 
in accordance with certain plans entertained in the 
present. Freedom of will implies the idea that 
we can so govern ourselves that we become partly, 



Fate and Astrology 139 

if not wholly, liberated from restraining influ- 
ences. We shall now consider the relation of 
these two, Fate and Free Will, to the science of 
astrology. 

Astrology as the symbolism of Fate is, accord- 
ingly, believed to be a prophetic science which 
gives expression to the decrees of the inevitable. 
It is the "writing on the wall" registering the de- 
cree of that invisible force which some philoso- 
phers have called Necessity. Many, therefore, 
hold that the cast of a horoscope at nativity is the 
forecast of a necessary future which by the laws 
of universal harmony must come to pass. They 
hold that, provided the casting is accurate and 
scientifically calculated, every foreshadowed cir- 
cumstance must occur. This is partly true. Why 
it is not wholly true we shall later see. 

The famous astrologers of earlier times and 
the foremost representatives of the science in our 
day agree that the casting of the horoscope is 
the casting of an individual's past, present and 
future. They hold that a horoscope is the out- 
ward presentation of the almost impassible barri- 
ers and the almost necessary favorable circum- 
stances which confront the subject. They say 
that a horoscope is the visualization of the in- 
visible law of causation as affecting and guiding 
individual life. Yet they do not absolutely say 



140 Practical Occultism 

so, for the grand initiates do not believe in a blind 
law or Fate. They adhere to a conception which 
is more in keeping with the dignity and the aim 
and end of human effort, while at the same time 
recognizing that intelligently governing Law 
which binds causes to effects and effects to causes. 
They see that certain foreshadowed favorable or 
unfavorable conditions have a certain causal con- 
nection. This causal connection, significant of an 
unerring law, they call Karma. They know that 
any circumstance which may affect individual life 
is an effect of a cause which has its antecedent 
.either in this or in a previous life, for it is a 
dogma of science that nothing can occur in the 
experience of individuality, human or otherwise, 
but the cause of the occurrence is involved in the 
attractive force of that individuality. So, there- 
fore, when we find circumstances affecting persons 
and can find no rational cause in the present life, 
we must of necessity refer it to a former life in 
which it was generated and has now come into 
expression. 

Thus it is the person and not the stars; it is 
personal causation, not stellar combinations which 
favor or jeopardize accordingly as the varying 
presentation of the horoscope favors or disfavors. 
We may consider the Law as the sustaining prin- 
ciple of a sphere composed, of course, of two 



Fate and Astrology 141 

hemispheres, one of these hemispheres being that 
of good, the other of evil. The propelling force 
which revolves that sphere is the Soul of Man. 
Astrology is that science which possesses the prin- 
ciple of presenting the changing conditions of that 
sphere to the outward mental vision. This is true 
of palmistry and other methods of divination, but 
it is particularly true of astrology. The stellar 
combinations, motions and aspects are, therefore, 
not primary in determining those necessary events 
which inevitably happen in human experience. In 
fact, astrology has nothing to do with determina- 
tion. It is only the presentation of the revolu- 
tions of that sphere which we found to be sus- 
tained by the Law and set to motion by the 
sphere-mover Man himself. This is a particu- 
larly fortunate illustration, for it is symbolic of 
the freedom of the will of the sphere-mover — 
Man. 

Another point of view which may be taken with 
regard to Fate, astrology and freedom of will 
is the correlative thesis in science which considers 
the molecular motions of the brain as generating 
or not generating consciousness. We know that 
with every attitude of consciousness we have a 
molecular motion in the brain. Dissensions have 
arisen as to whether this molecular motion actu- 
ally brings forth states of consciousness or merely 



142 Practical Occultism 

accompanies them, or, even more explicitly con- 
sidered, is only the material working by which 
pre-existing consciousness can manifest itself on 
the earth-plane where brain movements accom- 
pany states of consciousness. For the sake of 
illustration, we will consider the brain movements 
as representative of stellar movements, and per- 
sonal will as the life and the consciousness which 
associatively occurs with brain movements. Now 
the same question arises in astrology as in science : 
Is personal will nullified in the fact that stellar 
motions accompany or determine personal events 
as consciousness is alleged to be accompanied and 
determined by molecular motions; or are stellar 
motions only the material expression of causes 
and effects independently determined by the per- 
sonal will even as consciousness is claimed to pre- 
exist independently of molecular motions, which 
are considered only as the manifesting condition 
of consciousness in this particular plane? Lead- 
ing scientists of our day, those who have out- 
grown the obsolete dogmatic materialism of sev- 
eral decades ago, have in separate ways reached 
the same conclusion that the soul is immortal, 
independent of material environment, and pre- 
existing in some form or other, and that its pres- 
ent association with the brain is a limitation of 
its greatest psychic power, freedom and manifold- 



Fate and Astrology 143 

ness. Similarly, representative astrologers of this 
and of all periods are of the opinion that personal 
will is superior to Fate; that it has generated its 
own Fate, and that it can modify it if it has at- 
tained to any spiritual unfoldment. 

In a relative sense, however, there is no doubt 
that "our destiny is written in the stars." The 
enlightened point of view is that this destiny is 
self-woven. In this position lies the interpreta- 
tion of Fate and astrology. Personal will is 
absolutely free in its activity, but let that activity 
have been once determined and there is no escap- 
ing from its effects. The will has generated the 
cause and by the inevitableness of law and har- 
mony that cause must have its effect. From this 
effect there is no escape. That is the definition 
of destiny, this the definition of Freedom and the 
Will. We see that man is the architect of his own 
fate, the captain of his own soul, his own re- 
warder, his own punisher. He himself is the gen- 
erator of his birth and death tendencies, of his 
associations and surroundings, of his loves and 
his hatreds, of his weal and his woe. 

It has been suggested that there is no escape 
from the working out of a cause. This is true, 
but like many other truths, only relative. An 
effect must take place. That is certain. Were it 
otherwise, there would be an infringement of the 



144 Practical Occultism 

Law and the entire harmony of the cosmos would 
be disturbed. But we know that the action of cer- 
tain physical forces may be changed and modified 
to the point of attentuation, so that the differences 
in similarity between the first action of the force 
and its later modified action may be essentially 
different. A physical cause has been set in motion, 
and there must, of course, be a physical effect. 
Provided no radical conditions have been intro- 
duced, there will be a root semblance between the 
effect and the cause, but should some radical con- 
dition be introduced we would have those remark- 
able changes which occur in the laboratories when 
one chemical combination is essentially changed 
by the addition of a foreign substance. Applying 
these thoughts to a study of astrological predic- 
tions, the question arises whether a prediction 
representative of an effect of personal causation 
can be changed or modified. The answer is 
affirmative. We can change and modify an event 
which is yet to take place, even as the chemist may 
produce changes in his formula. But to modify 
an event which is yet to be, you must first of all 
have a knowledge of that event. Now, it may 
be the particular Karma of many people that they 
remain ignorant of astrology, and thus ignorant 
of their future. It is their self-woven fate to 
ridicule the science and its interpreters who could 



Fate and Astrology 145 

advise them of the approaching event. This par- 
ticular Karma exercised a great influence a quarter 
of a century ago, but at present, on account of 
the advance in psychology and the scientific inter- 
pretation of occultism, this Karma is less influ- 
ential and the usefulness of astrology is being 
recognized. But to return to the original thought, 
to change any event, we must first realize its ap- 
proach. Secondly, we must know how to change 
it so that its influence becomes less harmful, or 
so modified that good comes from the evil. In 
other words, "a man must rule his stars," and 
by ruling his stars is really meant ruling and 
checking that personal will of causes and effects, 
of circumstances and events which are fore- 
shadowed in a horoscope. This leads us to a 
moral consideration. Every evil aspect of the 
stars has a certain moral significance. Remem- 
bering that the personal will is the indirect factor 
in the representation of an evil aspect, we must 
attribute the evil to the personal will itself. Some- 
where that personal will has erred; somewhere it 
has deviated from the path; somewhere, through 
moral discrepancy, it has unknowingly beckoned 
the approach of the evil which it must now face. 
Could we penetrate beyond the veil which ob- 
scures one incarnation from another we could 
discern the cause of the evil circumstance as an 



146 Practical Occultism 

evil attitude of the personal will. We are reaping 
in a later day what we have sowed in a day 
previous. Hence the changing of an event implies 
the changing of the personal will. The old say- 
ing of the sages, "Do right and no evil can befall 
you" is the secret. When you carry yourself into 
the higher spiritual realm any approaching evil 
aspect will of necessity be modified, even as 
certain physical objects are modified by their 
approach to more powerful forces. Redeem the 
will and you bring it to a high plane where any 
event that may befall is radically changed because 
of the spiritual potency of the soul. Changing the 
condition of the soul is one of the methods by 
which an evil event becomes less harmful. Then 
again, the soul may attain such splendor and de- 
velopment that no matter what affects the body 
it remains undisturbed. He who is master of him- 
self is the master of Fate ; he who has conquered 
himself has risen above Fate. He who has united 
the mortal reflection with the celestial prototype; 
he who has spiritualized the lower elements of his 
nature and brought his appetites and passions into 
subjection is independent of anything which may 
occur in the temporary arrangement of things. 



KARMA 

One of the greatest truths, a truth which, when 
recognized, brings man to self-understanding and 
self-dependence is the fact that nothing comes into 
his life, either of joy or of pain, that is not the 
effect of personal merit or demerit. The Law 
acts impartially, unerringly, impersonally. If you 
meet with selfishness, misunderstanding, ingrati- 
tude, with love unrequited, sickness, misery or the 
many thousand evils to which life is liable, know 
that these conditions are the effects of causes set 
in motion by yourself in some previous time and 
place. Karma is the physical law of attraction 
aestheticised. Nothing can come within the 
range of magnetic motions aside from the cause 
which is in the lodestone itself. Similarly, in the 
realm of morals and their casual connection with 
personal experience, no sorrow or joy can visit 
the soul but that the inner cause of the experience 
is the soul itself. That is a sane attitude. Every 
thought, act of commission or omission, every 
word, every possible expression of consciousness, 
has a certain vibration which reaches forth from 

147 



148 Practical Occultism 

the soul gathering, in its wandering and in due 
time, and returns the fruits of its activity to the 
soul which called the vibration into life. This vi- 
bration is a psychic vibration, but psychic vibra- 
tions are only physical vibrations beyond the 
normal perception. They have a physical value, 
however, and, correspondingly as the expression 
is evil or good, will the vibration affect us in a 
physical as well as a psychic sense. This is a very 
simple truth and very consistent. It is the only 
rational conception of the relation of evil in gen- 
eral, and of good and of evil as affecting us per- 
sonally. 

In sending forth evil or good vibrations, we 
are making our choice. Thus we are the masters 
of our own fate, the captains of our own souls, 
and to blame a blind fate, hapless chance, inter- 
ference of Providence, or anything else for our 
troubles in life, is quite out of place. It is the atti- 
tude of the whimpering child. It is unworthy the 
dignity and self-dependence in the nature of man 
as a free moral agent. Man is ever ready to 
accredit to himself the praiseworthy things he 
has done; he is ready to believe that he deserves 
the fortunate things of life, but he rarely is ready 
to discuss the flaw side of his life and he rarely 
is ready to believe that he deserves the evil which 
comes his way. He holds fast to health and pros- 



Karma 149 

perity, but let the evil experience assert itself and 
you find complaint of the injustice of fate. He is 
willing to individualize his good luck, but never 
his misfortune. But in the eyes of the Law, good 
and evil are the same, in so far as both bear 
results and both come to man as the direct answer 
to his call, the direct result of causes of which he 
is the dispenser. 

Inseparably interblended is the Law of Karma 
with Reincarnation. Together they explain why 
children, without developed moral sense, are sub- 
ject to the miseries and woes of life. They alone 
explain why workers of evil have good-fortune, 
prosperity and success, and they also explain why 
people of eminent sanctity are burdened with the 
many tribulations which frequently affect them. 
Birth is regulated by the merit of the past life. 
Good-fortune in the way of evil men and women 
are the blessings of merit-worthy deeds, per- 
formed either here or in a life previous, for no 
soul is totally without some susceptibility to good. 
The saint undergoes his suffering because he de- 
serves it. Somewhere life-vibrations of evil were 
sown by him and in this life they develop, and 
suffering is the inevitable result. God cannot 
be accused of injustice in creating some persons 
physically deformed, others mentally disturbed, 
others in miserable conditions, while some are 



150 Practical Occultism 

created with most fortunate physical and aesthetic 
surroundings. It is not God who sends forth 
misery into this world. It is not God who pun- 
ishes or rewards. It is man who, by merit-worthy 
acts or by evil acts, as the case may be, generates 
the causes which in time bring him weal or woe. 
We can only explain, therefore, that all the evils 
befalling us in this life are resultant effects 
evolved from causes produced in a life previous. 
It is not the intention, however, to digress into 
Reincarnation. Besides ethical and moral rea- 
sons for its truth, there are a host of physical 
explanations and scientific reasonings which will 
be discussed in a later article on the subject of 
past lives. 

Granted that Reincarnation is a physical and 
spiritual fact, consider the number of lives past, 
lives which bind us to other selves antedating the 
birth of the solid portions of our world, perhaps, 
too, of other worlds. Consider, also, the infinite 
number of vibrations, good, evil or indifferent, 
which are latent in the storehouse of the soul 
which are to come into expression either in the 
near or the remote future. The vibrations of 
Karma are countless. When I speak, that is 
Karma; when I look, breathe, taste, smell, feel, 
desire, think, when I am happy, miserable, angry, 
pleased, and so on continuously, all is Karma. 



Karma 15 l 

When I perform all these various conditions of 
consciousness, I am aware of them, but they 
gradually become finer and finer. They are still 
in existence, though beyond the plane of con- 
sciousness, and continue to influence our life. We 
may have forgotten them, but we are influenced 
by them nevertheless. The heavier and more 
forcible vibrations we remember with little effort, 
the more vague and less important are recalled 
with difficulty. At times a passing odor, a 
similarity of scene, a particular daybreak or sun- 
set, a certain similarity in facial expression will 
recall a host of memories, — memories of child- 
hood days, memories to which we attach no rela- 
tive importance, memories of incidents unimpor- 
tant, long-passed and long-forgotten, and in these 
memories we re-live days gone by. It requires no 
psychological hypothesis to verify this. It is 
within the range of common everyday experience. 
Naturally this gives a clearer understanding of 
the workings of Karma, and we come to realize 
the immortality, as it were, of the most trivial 
thought and act. 

Every act and every thought rebounds upon the 
soul. Man is blessed or cursed by his deeds. 
They give him happiness even though he dwell 
alone in a forest; they bring him sorrow, even 
though he be surrounded with luxuries and ex- 



152 Practical Occultism 

travagances, with all that is desirable and enjoy- 
able to safeguard his existence. 

Karma is the only heaven and the only hell. 
And Karma is evolved by the activities of the 
mind. Correspondingly the Miltonic Satan calls 
out: " Myself am hell!" The genius of Shake- 
speare well knew the law. He says: "There is 
nothing good or bad but that thinking makes it 
so." It is our actions which pursue us, and, in 
the symbolism of the Orient, either follow us in 
pain "as the wheel follows the ox that draws the 
carriage," or conversely vibrate in a "happiness 
that like a shadow can never leave us." The 
apologue is in place here which tells of a soul 
newly arrived in the Elysian fields who is startled 
by an apparition, a horrifying shape, which is 
relentlessly in pursuit of him. In despair he turns 
and asks, "What art thou?" The reply is given: 
"I am thine own actions. Day and night I follow 
thee." And justly might one in the higher re- 
gions of Elysium, who finds himself followed by 
a shape angelic, ask: "What art thou?" and 
receive the answer: "I am thy good deeds ever 
blessing your way." 

When the fact of Karma once enters the mind 
as a vital truth, character will be radically 
changed. Nobody stands within range of a ven- 
omous snake. That imperils life. Accordingly 



Karma 153 

when convinced of the haunting specter and the 
pain of evil deed and thought one will readily 
avoid them, if not from a sense of duty, certainly 
from a sense of self-preservation. It is ignorance 
of the relationship between morals as effecting 
pain or pleasure which causes the unenlightened 
to indulge in unspeakable vices, leading to in- 
sanity, if not worse physical conditions. But the 
tide of evil will break upon the soul until that 
recognition comes. 

Apart from the understanding of Karma in 
its working out of evil there is the working out 
of good. To a greater extent, however, this good 
is manifested not so much in the bestowal of 
earthly treasures and pleasures as in the oppor- 
tunity given the soul to ascend in the scale of Be- 
ing to higher and ever higher planes. As for 
physical welfare, it has been said that all things 
should be added unto him who first of all sought 
the higher path. Physical wants and necessities 
will be administered so long as the individual 
administers to the soul. Karma is the provider 
of all things to those who place themselves in 
harmony with it. 

Karma is the secret of freedom of will, for 
no matter how great the load of evil with which 
we have burdened ourselves, it can be removed by 
altering the states of the soul which in the past 



154 Practical Occultism 

generated the evil. There is hope even for the 
worst of sinners. We must remember that cnar- 
acter is simply a bundle of habits, and that these 
habits can be changed. It may take a less or 
greater length of time, but changed they can be. 
In this sense there is hope even for the damned. 
Everlasting torture for a temporary act is incom- 
patible with the idea of Karma. One suffers in 
exact ratio and in intensity as was the ratio, inten- 
sity and other factors accompanying the initial 
force with which the evil act was performed. 
Hells and heavens are states of existence which 
endure after death for a longer or shorter time, 
iDut they are essentially transient. There is no 
stagnation in the order and perpetual progress of 
life. It is ever the greater heights, the wider 
understanding, the profounder wisdom and 
power. And unto these the more complete under- 
standing of Karma and the adaptation of its 
workings into our daily experience inevitably 
leads. 

"As you sow, so shall you reap," say the sages. 
"You may know a tree by its fruit," — in other 
words : the fruit of the inner-life tree may be sor- 
row, distress and affliction, or it may be joy, peace 
and spiritual triumph, and from this, to some ex- 
tent, the individual soul may be known and its 
state diagnosed. But we should be extremely 



Karma 155 

cautious in pronouncing judgment. A present 
physical affliction is in all certainty the result of 
some soul-aberration, yet as far as that soul is 
concerned it may have cleared itself of taint, and 
in the change of mental attitude rehabilitated and 
established itself to a much higher condition, 
while the body still bears the burden of affliction. 



THE WAYS OF KARMA 

The more a man reflects upon the circumstances 
of his life the more deeply is he impressed with 
the truth that all his comings and all his goings, 
however great or seemingly insignificant they may 
be, have a definite, even moral purpose, in his un- 
foldment. The reason why he is in a certain 
place and the fact that he comes into relation with 
certain persons and circumstances are purely psy- 
chological, if that term may be used in the con- 
nection, because through his experience with 
persons and conditions his mind becomes more 
complex and, in becoming more complex, also be- 
comes more enlightened, for no matter how ap- 
parently characterless our relations to life may be, 
some deep and vital meaning is embodied. 

As a man awakens to the higher perceptions 
and comes to a recognition of the mental nature 
of all occurrences, he is made vividly sensible of 
the reasons for every single relation that touches 
his life. If he is one portion of the world and 
he is made to travel in another part, it is for some 
reason that he discerns when his life in the new 

156 



The Ways of Karma 157 

relation has taken on certain definite proportions. 
Therefore, it is well with us no matter where we 
may be located. There is no need for impatience, 
nor discontent, for the Almighty Will is directing 
our lives to fullest service and expression. 

If this befalls us to-day and another thing 
occurs in our experience to-morrow it is for us 
to recognize that it is the best that can happen to 
us in our limited stage of development. Of 
course, better things could happen to us and will 
as we develop, but at any given stage of unfold- 
ment what comes to us is great or small in exact 
ratio to our present spiritual standing. It is best 
for us at the time being. We may know this at 
all times and seek rest in that knowledge. 

There are certain truths in life which when 
realized give us a sense of peace and perfection 
of which nothing can rob us. Such a truth is the 
fact that our lives are guided. If we recognize 
the guidance and work with it, we increase our de- 
velopment by that inestimable value of degree 
which the will possesses when it works with a 
current of purpose. If we follow the guidance, 
the leading becomes quicker and the development 
more and more complete in expression and per- 
fection. Otherwise we must abide by the uses of 
experience until we progress surely, but with 
laborious struggle and in great lengths of time. 



158 Practical Occultism 

The waves are apparitional. The circum- 
stances of life are similar. The supreme reality 
is the profound depth. The reality of our exist- 
ence is the abysmal depth of the Godhead within 
the soul. If we identify ourselves with the occur- 
rences which affect the psychical man, we are 
swayed to and fro, but uniting our consciousness 
to the spiritual man we grow into the likeness of 
the Indwelling One, of Him Whose name is un- 
utterable. The things of time, the accidents of 
fortune and the objects of desire become insignifi- 
cant, seen in themselves and the spiritual man 
takes a firm hold on this machine of individuality 
and forces it upward and onward by the sweet rea- 
sonableness of perfect faith and love. The indi- 
viduality of man is a changing fact. The reality 
through which individuality is seen is the reality 
of The Imperceptible. The changing phenome- 
non which we recognize as Mr. So-and-so exists 
only in and through the supreme spiritual reality. 

The woven destiny of karma which man makes 
when he thinks or feels, or does, or desires loosens 
its binding power when the personality is looked 
upon as something distinct from the spiritual man 
who changes the color of personality with each 
new projection of his individuality. As an illus- 
tration, the "I" always is, but the series of 
changes through which it passes, such as birth and 



The Ways of Karma 159 

death and the many occurrences of life thread 
the recurring phenomenon of personality. But 
the realization of this truth that personality is 
but a machine which is constantly acted upon by 
nature for the purposes of the recognition and 
expression of the spiritual man is a gradual 
process through which the mental outlook upon 
life is visibly and completely transformed. If a 
man thinks his life in sense expression, he will 
know little of the life of the mind, and as he 
merges his thought into the mind-world, the world 
of sense will lose its intense attraction. In a man- 
ner akin to this, a man is relatively insensate to 
the things of sense and thought when he is alive 
to the spiritual realities. 

Personality is something we can shape. It is 
like clay in the potter's hand. The potter is the 
Immutable God within. The clay is the psychical 
nature of life. The Immutable God is acting on 
this bit of clay which we variously distinguish as 
animal, vegetable, mineral, chemical, human and 
divine life, and the result is a series of infinite 
and magnitudinous changes. The majority of 
men see the changing shapes of clay, both in their 
lives and in the forms of life about them. They 
never know The Potter. But it is for this pur- 
pose that nature is progressing in a manner which 
men of science have termed evolution. The 



160 Practical Occultism 

Potter must be realized as the artificer, not as the 
clay images He brings into being. Each soul is 
That Potter at heart. As it realizes that truth, 
he loosens his grasp on this relative life through 
whose medium these images of clay are expressed 
and knows himself as That. 

Thus knowing, the soul cares not how the winds 
of fortune may blow, nor does it concern itself 
unduly with the things that make for the enlarge- 
ment of sensuous existence. Dead to the things 
of sense and sense-nourished thought, the soul, 
resident on its own plane, lives the divine life of 
the soul. There are certain psychological distinc- 
tions in the caste and types of minds that are like 
Chinese walls which separate those of one sphere 
of mind from those of another, and that great 
gulf of failure to comprehend also stands be- 
tween. That is why neither the sense-living man, 
nor the philosopher penetrates the wisdom of the 
sage, and deem him the victim of hallucination* 
and ignorance. 

The growing distinction between the permanent 
and the real and the impermanent and the unreal 
elements of life will give a new value and a new 
interpretation of life. Where once we accredited 
supreme importance to the daily occurrence and 
emphasized the momentary state of mind in which 
we might have found ourselves, we will impose a 



The Ways of Karma 161 

minimum value and ascribe the permanence of 
any given condition and its beauty and its value 
to the divine reality, seeking, changing and devel- 
oping values in our most chance happening. We 
will then know that if we travel a great distance 
and visit many places our development lies 
through such circumstances, and if we remain in 
one place a great length of time, we may also 
know that in the waiting there is a needed condi- 
tion which is working itself into our life in the 
great uses of the soul. Thus all things have a 
kindred value. It matters not the prominence of 
the position we may hold, nor does the obscurity 
in which we may be placed affect the values of 
soul. The main reason and the inner meaning is 
alike the same in all conditions, whether high or 
low, and that reason and meaning is the constant 
growth of expression and the greater revelation 
of the soul. 

The outer accidents are relative and the sub- 
stantial is the mental status. The outer is of as- 
sistance in rendering the mental status clearer and 
more spiritual, provided the mind rightfully re- 
lates itself to the uplifting things in life. 



THE SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION 

No matter how keen a man's reason may be, 
no matter how discriminating his judgment, how 
lucid his thoughts and how penetrating his insight, 
he can never arrive at the truth of things by these 
alone. There is but one method by which the 
soul of things and their real life and the meaning 
of their forms and influence may be appreciated. 
This is by the educated feelings that arise in the 
heart of man when his soul is attuned to the finer 
and purer things of life. These feelings are feel- 
ings of unselfishness, of sympathy, of genuineness, 
of loyalty, of honesty, of integrity and of sin- 
cerity. 

Feeling is, after all, the only direct and immer 
diate mode of perception. It is the only real 
and actual means whereby consciousness becomes 
related to the substance and the qualities of truth 
as they are expressed in the laws and forms of 
the universe; spiritual, mental, psychic and phys- 
ical. Feeling is the most intimate connection be- 
tween the sentient, self-conscious subject and its 
object, be this animate or inanimate. 

162 



The Spiritual Perception 163 

Reason has developed from instinctive feelings 
and their play in the physical area of expression, 
but there are feelings that are above all forms 
of logic and before whose onrushing certainty the 
so-called truths of reason take speedy flight, for 
reason, though important in the education of the 
real thinker, does not completely and isolatedly 
explain those rare forms of intuitive and aesthetic 
feelings that compose whatever is inspirational, 
supersensuous and truly beautiful in human life. 

Sensation is the first manifestation of conscious 
life, but as sensation, in the evolutionary course, 
became and is constantly becoming more complex, 
heterogeneous and more integrated, it becomes 
more meaningful and the purpose and the design 
behind nature is seen to have, in its divine fore- 
sight, a great scheme in which the scene is gradu- 
ally becoming more perfect and beautiful and 
ever enlarging in perspective, color and quality, — 
a great scheme in which, also, the intelligences 
that people are developing with every new experi- 
ence, and with every shifting and shading of the 
scene. 

The possibilities and susceptibilities of sensa- 
tion are indefinite. They are not limited by the 
boundaries or by the binding influences of time. 
Space is infinite in its relations to consciousness 
and is replete with endless myriads of forms and 



164 Practical Occultism 

with planes upon which these forms develop into 
more and more statuesque and complete propor- 
tions to allow the soul of them to expand more 
and more in the direction of self-illumination and 
spiritual perception. 

Nature has not absolutely conditioned the per- 
ceptions of life within the boundary lines and the 
area of experiences of five physical senses. Na- 
ture does not need limit itself with regard to the 
forms it builds for the inhabiting of different con- 
sciousnesses. Nature contains within itself the 
possibility of every possible combination, just as 
the mathematical scale contains within itself the 
potentiality of producing any number of different 
sums, all partaking of the figures from 1 to o, or 
better of two forms of figures. 

The universe is infinite, infinite as to space and 
infinite as to time. It is infinite in its relations 
and infinite in the number of its myriad combina- 
tions. Study for a moment the human face; 
Notice that in each face nature has imprinted her 
signal, differentiating stamp, so that no two faces 
in the world are exactly alike. 

Man, in the normal state of development, can 
become conscious of the universe only with the 
aid of extremely limited faculties, only with pov- 
erty-stricken means of limited sense perception. 
The universe is revealed to man in many forms, 



The^Spiritual Perception 165 

but this revelation, no matter how extensive or 
how numerous its presentations, can only be par- 
tial, exceedingly partial, and the all-containing 
and all-satisfying truth is as far from us as we 
are from the realization of what we term the 
soul. Just as we may satisfactorily analyze the 
separate states of our consciousness, as we may 
throw the light of reason upon the status of dif- 
ferent workings of minds, so we can definitely ap- 
preciate and comprehend the separate revelations 
of the universe, but we find that the universe itself 
escapes us, even as does our consciousness, be- 
cause it is subjective. Just as consciousness is 
subjective to any of its individual states, so the 
universe, as a whole, is subjective to any of its 
myriad revelations. 

After all, the universe, in its revelations, can 
never be anything but partial. For this reason 
there is always knowledge beyond what is known 
and there is also an infinite storehouse of possible 
knowledge within the spirit of man himself. The 
universe, being unlimited in the processes of its 
revelations, is limitless also in its position as an 
eternal source of knowledge and an eternal pro- 
ducer of its objects of knowledge. For this rea- 
son what is known is only partial knowledge and 
there is always the immediately unknown before 
the mind. 



1 66 Practical Occultism 

No matter how great the knowledge many may 
acquire, it is ever conditioned. The universe re- 
veals itself in an endless series of combinations 
and every new combination becomes a new object 
of knowledge, and this revelation, co-extensive 
with the infinity of space and time through which 
it manifests, is also infinite. 

Man with his conditioned modes of percep- 
tion is unable to comprehend the universe. That 
is why the great problems which have caused the 
greatest minds of the race to ask and re-ask will 
ever remain unsolved so far as the solution can 
be brought before the world such as a scientific 
solution could. Whatever answer exists to the 
fundamental questions of life, it must be individ- 
ual. Man seeks to know the universe. The 
very fact of his seeking shows that something ex- 
ists within the deeper strata of his being that 
corresponds with the universe as such, for it is 
impossible to conceive that nature should have 
endowed man with the super-sensuous feeling that 
something beyond the physical senses exists unless 
a faculty of perceiving that super-sensuousness is 
also potential in the heart of man. Where a 
question may be asked there must be an answer. 
Perhaps the answer cannot be formulated imme- 
diately; neither have any of the answers of science 
been suddenly revealed. There is a faculty be- 



* 



The Spiritual Perception 167 

longing to the realm of pure spirit and to the 
spiritual portion of man's nature that is one with 
the universe, but this faculty is something vastly 
distinct from what is commonly understood as 
mind. Reason is only a modification of it. Or- 
dinary sensation is only a limited expression of it. 
Possibly the extension of the human faculty, the 
extension of reason and the spiritualization and 
refinement of feeling may develop a super-normal 
perception, an attenuated consciousness, a higher 
range of susceptibility to external impressions 
through which facts and truths, hitherto unre- 
vealed and unknown, can be known and revealed. 
It is exceedingly difficult to present the truth 
to the ordinary sense-craving and sense-grasping 
and sense-living mind that there are spiritual and 
menta-psychical realities and truths beyond the 
limited horizon of mere physical existence. The 
statement of the man of spirit that the universe 
is indefinite in extension and vibration, that in- 
telligence and spiritual life exist from lowest 
to human and from super-human planes upward is 
met with the smile of the cynic or disbeliever. 
Yet science is coming to recognize these very 
things. Day after day she is delving into the 
secret mysteries of the universe and discovering 
an array of facts that must make the intelligent 
man pause and reflect and believe that there are 



1 68 Practical Occultism 

revelations still to come from the hidden springs 
of the investigating mind and that until these 
revelations are brought from their superior 
heights, we can only hope. The morn of scien- 
tific discovery is rich with the promise of a spir- 
itual day in which the sun of new revelation shall 
herald the supreme light. For in such a direction 
does the tide of human thought point. 

It is equal to circumstances that the disbeliever 
reckons in error when he unreasonably discredits, 
without investigating, statements upon which the 
racial mind has centered its deepest thought and 
through which its most cultivated feelings and its 
aeon-developing civilization have been given life 
and expression. It is wrong, miserably wrong, 
to accept things with an unquestioning faith, but 
it is far worse for the disbeliever to disbelieve in 
an uncritical manner and in an uninformed way. 
He who condemns without understanding the cir- 
cumstances and the situations, the facts and phe- 
nomena accredited to certain modes of life, can- 
not be called wise. He alone has the right to 
criticize who has reasoned along the lines of his 
criticism and appreciates to the full the subject 
matter discussed by him. Therefore, in relegat- 
ing the conditions and realities of the spiritual life 
to general sense growth, speaking of them as the 
outcome, natural and physical, of life's upward 



The Spiritual Perception 169 

and evolutionary trend, a man is liable to err be- 
cause of the want of true information concerning 
the meaning and the value of life in general. It 
would be conceited in the extreme on the part of 
any person to declare that we have reached the 
acme of spiritual or intellectual insight into the 
hidden and ultimate nature and essence of the 
universe and life. 

The biased mind can see nothing but the nega- 
tive side of any hypothesis, and presuppositions 
bias the mental tendencies so that it cannot see 
the positive and complete side. A biased mind 
in this sense has reference to the natural and un- 
justified bias against the spiritual interpretation 
of life. It is a sad state of affairs when prejudice 
blinds the view. It is a sad state of affairs when 
self-will blinds the rational sense and with inten- 
tional deceit cries that no light exists. There 
are these two — light and darkness — and the light 
exists in itself and is seen by reason of its own 
radiating glory, but darkness too exists, — only in 
this sense, however, that in the inherent soul of 
nature ignorance shuts out the perspective and 
can be removed only by the bitter experience of 
pain in the long lapsing of time. 

Life is open, patent, clear. It is not confused 
by logical terms nor blinded by the so-called light 
of reason. There is only one, self-illuminating 



iyo Practical Occultism 

light in the cosmos and this light is the light of 
the soul. Whatever other light exists is only the 
borrowed reflection of that spiritual and central 
light. 

A man does not reason when he observes natu- 
ral phenomena. So far as he is concerned he is 
satisfied that they exist, that they are, and no 
array of argument could convince him that they 
do not exist. That which is immediately percep- 
tible by the senses is that which we call real. So, 
if there are super-physical truths and phenomena 
in life they should be perceived, not by the bor- 
rowed light of intellect, but by the perfect vision 
of- the soul. 

Is such vision possible? Yes. Reason has its 
important and appropriate position and sphere in 
the schedule of perception, but reason does not 
explain. After all reason leaves us as we were 
before. Did not Sir William Hamilton say: "A 
learned ignorance is the end of philosophy" ? 
That which is of supreme importance to the indi- 
vidual is personal and actual perception concern- 
ing what others believe to be the truth and what 
the individual himself believes is the truth. 

Men may reach conclusions after conclusions, 
but the trouble is that they will never reach the 
same conclusion. If all philosophers reached the 
same conclusion it would be well for the race in 



The Spiritual Perception 171 

so far as it would believe that the truth had been 
revealed, but this cannot be. In case the ultimate 
truth should be declared to be this or that, man 
could follow the corresponding course of con- 
science and conduct. But the greatest system of 
thought can only be incomplete, for though it may 
have reached the veriest pinnacle of thought, that 
which it declares to be the truth still remains sub- 
jective, still hidden from view, still immersed in 
a sea of doubt, and the conduct of a man will 
bear this out through his irresolute and wavering 
will. The goal is individual realization. 

Feeling must work out the assertion of thought. 
It must explain in terms of accurate and clear 
vision the metaphysics of thought. Logic may 
say what is truth, but feeling, alone, can make 
truth tangible and provable. There is no ques- 
tion that logic arrives at truth, but this truth is 
theoretical. It is subjective, and to become liv- 
ing and active and effective it must be brought 
to the plane of practical, objective experience. 
In other words, truth must be sensed and directly 
perceived as man may perceive a table or chair 
or anything that has form. 

The mystery of truth is a mystery because it 
cannot be rendered tangible in our lives. The 
blindness of desire leads the mind into paths other 
than mental or spiritual and thus it cannot rest 



172 Practical Occultism 

on or earnestly desire the practical forms and 
interpretation of truth. The mind is busied with 
the thousand myriad things that are external to 
itself. It does not ponder over its individual 
mysteries. It is least concerned with its own life. 
It has no consideration for truth outside of its 
practical, economic area. 

Truth, to the average man, is expressed in so 
many commercial figures. It is not something 
that is ideal, subjective, enlarging the scope of 
feeling or refining the discrimination and judg- 
ment of reason. Before the mind can hope to 
perceive the truth concerning itself or the truth 
concerning the outer arrangement of life it must 
give up this fancied necessity of a complete phys- 
ical consciousness. It must cease thinking that 
this body-life is the only life and that the body- 
cares are the only cares that should be attended to. 

The mind must thread the broken thought of 
spiritual life and endeavor to reach beyond that 
which is passing, living for the moment, enduring 
as the life of a shadow might endure. There 
are radiant truths beyond the truths that concern 
the life of the body or the needs that concern the 
body. The mind must arouse the latent powers 
it possesses. As it is, it is content to rest in the 
commonplaceness of its barest effort. It would 
rather stagnate amid the passing forms and the 



The Spiritual Perception 173 

fleeting life of physical existence. Whatever 
push or energy the mind has is the result of the 
spur of pain, quickening the soul to the necessity 
of utilizing its hidden faculties, imperatively im- 
pelling it, by the force of circumstance, into wider 
avenues of thought and expression. 

Whatever presentation the universe may reveal 
to us, it does so through feeling. The universe 
is like a vast, infinite being that continually sur- 
prises the limited mind of man with the appalling 
manifoldness under which it expresses itself. 
Feeling reacts upon this manifoldness, and 
through this constant reaction knowledge is born. 
This knowledge manifests in philosophy, chem- 
istry, physics, embracing all the arts and sciences 
and all philosophy. 

When this vast cosmic being acts upon our lives 
as a whole through those peculiar feelings com- 
monly held as religious, it is very important just 
what character these religious feelings assume, 
what moral and intellectual character they may 
embody and what value can be attached to them. 

Religious feeling arises through the action of 
the universe, in its general sense, upon the soul 
of man. This feeling is as positive as any other 
feeling; in fact, much more positive. We may 
speak of the universal wholeness of God. The 
term, to some extent, approaches the true concept 



174 Practical Occultism 

of the cosmic whole. In ordinary manifestations 
God or the Absolute, or whatever else the su- 
preme principle of nature may be called, reveals 
itself in any of the phenomena of nature from 
the most crude, inferior and commonplace to the 
most refined, spiritual and exalted. In a finite 
sense it reveals itself in the thousand details of 
human life and in the myriad aggregations of in- 
animate matter. In its complete, absolute and 
unlimited manifestation it superimposes the whole- 
ness of its life and form upon the soul, and the 
soul is thereby raised into a mode of special per- 
ception and consciousness which necessarily dif- 
fers, in every particular, from the usual modes of 
perception and from the usual modifications of 
the mind and consciousness. 

That is why mystic feelings are incommuni- 
cable. First of all, every feeling is incommuni- 
cable. Still, it may be expressed to some extent, 
but the ultimate value and reality of the mystic 
feelings are too exalted to be forcibly and intel- 
ligibly expressed because of the poverty of human 
thought, for thought even is poverty-stricken in 
conceiving the range and extent of mystic feelings, 
and as thought is antecedent to language these 
feelings are and can be only partially described. 

One may peruse the devotional books of every 
religion and even come into contact with living 



The Spiritual Perception 175 

examples of the principles taught by devotional 
books ; one may observe the mystic experiences of 
the saint, yet he will always find that the mind 
cannot grasp the super-physical element in religion 
and that it cannot comprehend the momentous 
value of spiritual life and feeling, for these things 
are beyond ordinary sense experience and partake 
of a nature that is more developed and expressive 
than the nature of the mind itself. 

The reality of all spiritual teaching must re- 
main hypothetical so long as man seeks the reali- 
zation of physical desires and gives the greater 
part of his time and thought to the working out 
of sensuous existence. One cannot serve Mam- 
mon and the spiritual Self at the same time. 
While physical desires have their appropriate and 
consistent place in the order of being, they are 
secondary to the all-important considerations of 
spiritual life and expression. Man places all con- 
sideration on the body. So long as this continues 
he cannot see any light beyond the borrowed light 
that gives color, life and form to physical nature. 

The great men of the world accredit the mind 
with a superior importance and value and exist- 
ence than the value, importance and existence of 
the body. The greatest men of the world, those 
who have left their vital impress on the life of 
nations and who have given the upward trend to 



176 Practical Occultism 

civilization through the formation or rehabilita- 
tion of racial morality, say that the supreme ex- 
istence is that of the soul which manifests as mind 
and body. It is the life of the soul which they 
emphasize. It is the life of the everlasting soul, 
free from the desolate bondage of body and the 
feverish distempers of man's psychical constitu- 
tion, that these spiritual giants champion. 

The spiritual teachers say that if there is a 
soul it must be known, sensed, nourished and de- 
veloped, even as* the body and mind of man are 
solicitously cared for. They ask man to place 
importance on the inner life of the soul and to 
regard as transient the accidents and happenings 
of purely sensuous existence. Are they right in 
requesting this? Have they reached the Abso- 
lute Fact in life? Indeed, have they come to 
the comprehension of the All-Sufficient Truth? 
Have they then sensed the Infinite Presence? 

It might be well if the soul stopped to consider, 
stopped for a moment this ceaseless identification 
of itself with the body and ponder over the ex- 
istence of the Self within. 



BUSINESS AND CONCENTRATION 

Our lives are the materialized expression of 
our thought processes. We are always concen- 
trating the mind, whether consciously or uncon- 
sciously, on one thing or another. At times this 
concentration is more definite and continued, and 
consequently its results are more determined and 
pronounced, than at others. The mind is con- 
stantly drifting from one point to the other. 
Never is it as steady as it should be, yet what 
little steadiness there is is the secret of bur 
progress and prosperity. 

Leaving aside all other considerations and view- 
ing concentration as it influences the commercial 
life, we will be interested to know how this great 
force energizes the business world. Centers like 
Wall street, Chicago and Denver Boards of 
Trade, when peopled by stock-brokers and finan- 
cial speculators of every description, are filled 
with enough concentrated force to disturb or ad- 
just the mightiest conditions. These men, who 
represent the financial and industrial conditions 
of our country, men who wield the mighty sceptre 

177 



178 Practical Occultism 

of finance and commerce, are trained in concentra- 
tive processes. Their minds are focalized power. 
Their thoughts are effective agents in bringing 
about the desired results. The force of thought 
is greater than the force of Niagara, and a clair- 
voyant would be awe-stricken on viewing the 
thought-forces and thought-forms which escape 
with such concentrative power. 

The business world is an excellent field for 
the attainment of self-control, self-mastery and 
the ability to concentrate. In the struggle and 
the tremendous competition personal feelings 
must be repressed, personal antipathies set aside, 
for to gain business success man must almost steel 
his soul into emotional impossibility. There is 
but one aim in business — financial success and the 
aggrandizement of personal business. To reach 
the same requires all the concentration that the 
individual can possibly give. The business man 
is possibly the busiest-minded of human beings. 
His attitude of mind is the life or death of his 
business. He is more absorbed in his respective 
sphere than the most self-absorbed of the leaders 
in the professional or artistic world. 

To be successful in business is to be concen- 
trated on nothing but business. This is by no 
means derogatory, for the vocation of the busi- 
ness man is as much a necessary part of the social 



Business and Concentration 179 

scheme and as dignified as are the more special 
callings of science and art. Without the business 
man the social plan would be indeterminate. The 
business man is the foundation rock upon which 
is erected the temple of the larger humanity with 
its music and its poetry. Therefore the concen- 
tration of the mind along business lines is not 
harmful. The Law has bequeathed as much 
pleasure to the work of the business man as it 
has to the work of the artist. 

A private business possesses almost indefinite 
possibility to arouse the higher faculties. It calls 
for the deepest concentration. This is more ap- 
propriate to those commercial features which are 
operated on a speculative basis. When there is 
a great rising or a great falling in quotations, the 
mind of the business man is almost at fever-point 
of concentration. The resultant effect on the 
body can be frequently observed in the sudden 
illnesses of a large percentage of our New York 
and Chicago financiers. It is at least forcibly 
suggested by the necessitated occasional retire- 
ment of men of the Harriman type. Failure to 
respond to the physical call for retirement was 
the cause of the recent death of that chief of 
commercial enterprise, the late Mr, H. H. Rogers. 
His position as first vice-president of the Standard 
Oil Company required a concentrated power equal 



180 Practical Occultism 

to that of a score of minor business men. His 
success was in ratio to his concentrative power, 
and it was stupendous. Yet even as the greatest 
natural forces wear out by spending their power 
at a rapid rate, the mind of Mr. Rogers over- 
whelmed the body. One of the greatest needs of 
business men is that of relaxation, and though 
advised repeatedly to follow this requisite, Mr. 
Rogers failed to do so, with the consequence of 
his demise. Men who have climbed the upper- 
most round of the ladder of commercial great- 
ness, who control millions and millions of dollars 
and the life opportunities of thousands of people, 
need not be advised with regard to concentrative 
methods in the pursuit of their business. They 
instinctively recognize these methods and apply 
them with the greatest possible diligence. Con- 
centration is as much a part of their lives as the 
round of daily physical necessities. They show 
inclinations and tendencies to these qualities be- 
fore they have yet attained to manhood. Mr. 
John D. Rockefeller was an accomplished man 
of business at a time when most young men are 
getting a definite conception of their vocation in 
mind. Before the age of thirty-five he was the 
leader among the ring of leaders of that earlier 
period. But a business genius, like an artistic 



Business and Concentration 181 

genius, must be born. Men of the Rockefeller 
type are few and far between. 

The methods of the capital financiers embrace 
every suggestion in the way of concentration that 
might be given to the subordinate man of busi- 
ness. They can assimilate in their business ex- 
perience and methods on a smaller scale what 
these giants of commerce operate in titanic revo- 
lutions. 

Concentration implies so many things that it 
is a difficult matter to speak of any one as par- 
ticularly important, because they are all impor- 
tant. A few suggestions, however, will lead to 
further speculation. When the mind is concen- 
trated it becomes insensate to what is going on 
around it. The business man, especially in his 
earlier struggle, must affiliate himself with naught 
but his business. He cannot alienate his mind 
into other paths. His concentration must lead 
him to an enthusiasm which defies all contrary 
suggestions. It is at the height of enthusiasm 
that the artist and the poet, the writer and the 
social reformer accomplish their highest task. It 
is at the height of enthusiasm that the business 
man turns his greatest successes. It essentially 
follows in contrast that the waning of this enthusi- 
asm is undesirable. It should not be a haphazard 



1 82 Practical Occultism 

state of mind, but one which is persistent enough 
to remain high-pitched and resonant in fullness 
of tone in the face of adverse circumstances. The 
men who are the owners of millions know this 
secret: Like the gamblers of Monte Carlo they 
will not allow any diffident mental attitude to ex- 
ternalize. They put up the "bluff." Inwardly 
they desperately fight any mental condition which 
would lead to self-depreciation and lack of self- 
confidence. Their enthusiasm is ever buoyant, 
ever aspirant, ever idealistic, ever optimistic. It 
fights with death-desperateness, gaining inch by 
inch and ultimately attaining its purpose. 

' Of tremendous occult importance is the neces- 
sity of being calm-minded and unworried. There 
are plenty of occasions when critical circumstances 
arise in business relations which in the average 
instance upset the mind of the commercial man, 
but the secret lies in gracefully meeting the situa- 
tion. If allowed to do so the mind easily slips 
backward from the desirable point. It is far 
more easy for the mind to concentrate itself along 
the lower lines, lines of distress and worry, than 
to keep at a normal level, but in keeping at a 
normal level is the salvation of the commercial 
man. After a thing has fallen down, it is a 
harder task to rebuild. It is easier to descend 
from a mountain than to climb a mountain, but 



Business and Concentration 



183 



it is only the view the ascent gives that is worth 
anything whatever. Accordingly in business 
methods, when crowded conditions make their ap- 
pearance, the mind gives way under them and it 
is a difficult task to get back to that normal en- 
thusiasm and well-centered concentration which 
is the power by which business is propelled. 

Therefore, he who would achieve the desired 
result in matters of commerce and finance must 
learn how to control the mind. If it seeks to 
wander, if it seeks lower channels of expression, 
it is immediately necessary to gather all the poise 
and equilibrium which will serve as resisting 
power to the unsettled and dissipated mental 
state. Then is the time for wakefulness, the 
time to gather all the mental strength that can be 
safely employed without injury to the body. If 
on these occasions the mind is steady, firm in 
purpose, prepared to meet the ill-favored condi- 
tion with every equity of temper, the difficulty 
will be abridged. Following this trying condition 
it is well to thoroughly relax. Then is the appro- 
priate time for vacation, for vacation should not 
be a matter of convention, but of mental and 
physical necessity. 

Renewed enthusiasm, redissipated, is worse 
than no enthusiasm. A normal, steady, level, prac- 
tical state of mind is better than fitful starts and 



184 Practical Occultism 

letting go. Concentration is the power by which 
nervous worry over business matters can be suc- 
cessfully overcome. Concentration can alone 
give that thoroughness of mentality which adds 
force and importance to inter-relative business. 



SELF-EDUCATION 

There can be no self-help without self-knowl- 
edge and there can be no self-knowledge without 
a continuous self-education. Man must know his 
powers before he can use them. He must under- 
stand his weaknesses before he can overcome 
them, for we all have weak points as well as 
strong ones. 

To know ourselves we must endeavor to keep 
account of ourselves, to study and try to under- 
stand the various impulses which apparently with- 
out any consideration on our part sway us hither 
and thither in the great arena of life. True self- 
comprehension arises when a man has come face 
to face with himself, when he looks into the mir- 
ror of his conduct and from the image therein 
shadowed draws a faithful mental picture of what 
he is, of what his limitations, opportunities, fac- 
ulties, talents, advantages, disadvantages, tenden- 
cies and inclinations consist. He must get at the 
rock-bottom of his character, so to speak, and find 
for himself the truth, the knowledge and the 
power dormant within the deeper strata of indi- 
vidual life. 

185 



1 86 Practical Occultism 

But to do this a man must be sincere with him- 
self. He must be able to make a clear study of 
himself. He must have learned the art of pure 
criticism. He must be brave enough to delve into 
the mysteries, spiritual and psychological, that ini- 
tiate the spirit of a man into the wayward or 
rational paths of human life. He must stand 
erect and squarely come to a self-reckoning in 
which neither injustice nor over-examination have 
play, but impartiality, soundness of mind and per- 
spicacity of discrimination and judgment are 
brought to serve the great purpose of self-illumi- 
nation. 

There is a torch at the disposal of every indi- 
vidual. Shedding the light of that torch upon 
the nature of personality, the individual is brought 
to a comprehensive perspective of the secret, un- 
derlying life of this fleeting, sensuous, desire-bred 
and desire-fancied life. Apart from the momen- 
tous relations between the external and the inter- 
nal man, there are hosts of obstacles and trials 
that must be successfully confronted ere a man 
can hope to master himself or appreciate the full 
light of the Indwelling One Who stands at the 
background of every individual existence as its 
living soul and moving force. 

These momentous relations between the exter- 
nal and the internal man embody the warp and 



Self-Education 187 

the woof of life's mysterious veils that separate 
this plane of perception from superior planes, that 
darken and blind the extended spiritual vision and 
cast a pall of self-belittlement over the true nature 
of the immortal man, subject to no limitations, 
resident, at will, on all planes, knowing all things, 
sensing all things, living and existing through all 
things, human or superhuman, inanimate or ani- 
mate. 

A man must learn to define the outlines of his 
true character. He must sense the boundaries 
that inhibit the otherwise unhampered vision of 
the awakened sight. So long as a man declares 
himself to be this or that, he is this or that which 
presents itself as a living, sentient object in his 
mind, for all things, thoughts as well as words 
and deeds have living potency and come from the 
realm of the unknown with as great a realism of 
life and form as the so-called solid objects about 
us. 

Who and what is the real man? Knowing 
him, self-help will dawn from the crystal, ever- 
lasting heights. Knowing him, self-knowledge 
will flow through the flood-gates of the awakened 
mind. The real man cannot be identified with 
passing shadows. Above limitations he cannot 
be identified with their binding force and hinder- 
ance. 



1 88 Practical Occultism 

Getting at the facts of life means coming into 
relations with truths and realities hitherto unre- 
vealed, for there are myriads of truths and reali- 
ties that are, as yet, only theoretical. Man sees 
them as ideals, but before they become actualities 
they will have to assume a more definite and con- 
crete shape. 

Truth is imperceptible in its absolute sense. 
Man sees it personified and worships it, but the 
spiritual and supreme ideal of truth is always sub- 
jective and only the subjective portions of man's 
nature can become consciously related to it. The 
ideals of truth or of goodness are far beyond the 
'realm of the material and the coarse physical. 
They are of the spiritual and mental planes of 
being. 

We cannot see the greatness of the sun or 
fathom its burning light and power because of 
the enormous distance between us and that great 
body. In a similar sense and by comparison, 
probably the human intellect is at too remote an 
angle of perception to fully distinguish the splen- 
dor and the marvelousness of truth in and for 
itself. It must be projected, as it were, in char- 
acter before it is realized as an active reality and 
influence. Let us get closer to the radiant sun 
of truth. Opening our eyes to its wonderful 
vista, let us raise the external stature of the soul 



Self-Education 189 

to its supreme level and greatness. Let us ac- 
quire the piercing sight of the eagle. That bird, 
with ease sees the fiercest burning, brilliant rays 
of the sun. Its eyes are not blinded by the great 
light, nor is it timid to soar into the great, white 
empyrean. 

Self-education consists in a masterful self-ana- 
lyzation. Such an analysis, however, is largely 
philosophical. It depends largely upon a knowl- 
edge of the reality of the soul. Once the soul 
is conscious of the fact that it is all, supreme, 
deathless, unchangeable and perfect, once it has 
sensed the infinity of its nature and realized the 
deeper feelings of the heart, it will react upon 
itself in such a way that its entire activity will ex- 
press itself in a continuous self-revelation. 

Knowledge and education are internal facts and 
their development is followed largely along in- 
ternal processes. All that books and teachers can 
do is to show us what to do to gain knowledge, 
but we have to set ourselves to the task. If we 
earnestly desire education, our minds would be 
like magnets drawing to themselves the external 
things that correspond to the internal desires. 
Knowledge is not a quality of the soul. It is 
the nature and the essence of the soul. External 
stimuli strike against the soul and it reacts in the 
form of knowledge. 



190 Practical Occultism 

The greatest fact that can be proclaimed before 
the world, the fact that all must some day come 
to realize is the knowledge-life-and-bliss nature of 
the soul. Life and knowledge and bliss are not 
accidents of the soul, but they are its essence. 
The mind embraces its own ideal and in the em- 
brace bliss is born. And as the objects of bliss 
are more and more closely related to the being of 
man he loves them with graduating intensity. A 
man loves his friend better than a stranger, his 
relations better than strangers, his wife better 
than these, his children equally as his wife, but 
better than these he loves his self, the conscious- 
ness of his soul. There is an inner man clothed 
in this physical venture of decay. He is not dis- 
turbed by death, but is subject to the fluctuations 
of the mental ocean. This the soul regards more 
than all others. 

The more we explore the inner life, tKe nearer 
we approach the blissful Self. Realizing that 
Self, the nature of bliss itself is realized. All this 
outer seeking for happiness is then seen to have 
been useless and fruitless, for the only object and 
the only being that could have attracted was the 
Blissful Self resident throughout all time and 
space. 

When a man knows he is a soul, he knows that 
he is not the body and his life will shine forth 



Self -Education 191 

in this knowledge. When a man knows that the 
true existence within him is not that of the chang- 
ing mind, he will come to realize that behind this 
body and this mind, behind change and imper- 
fection there is a life which is one with the crea- 
tive spirit of mind and form, beyond these, and 
therefore the life that is ever free and blissful. 

The Supreme Godhead within voices with in- 
finite power: "I never had death or fear. I have 
no difference of caste or creed. I had neither 
father nor mother, nor birth nor death, nor friend 
nor foe, for I am the Existing-Knowledge-Bliss 
Absolute, I am the Blissful One, I am the Blissful 
One. I am bound neither by virtue nor by vice, 
by happiness nor by misery. Pilgrimages and 
books and the Vedas and all these ceremonies can 
never bind me. I do not eat; the body is not 
mine, nor the superstitions that come to the body, 
nor the decay that comes to the body, for I am 
Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, I am the 
Blissful One, I am the Blissful One." 

Of course, here the Spiritual Unit of the soul 
is speaking. The soul filled with realization is 
speaking, not the fluctuating life of mind and 
sense. The Infinitely Pure and Perfect One is 
voicing the true character of His endless being. 
"Thou art That Supreme Existence" cannot be 
spoken of the changing personality. That is the 



192 Practical Occultism 

mistake so many students of the Vedanta make. 
While in the supreme sense we are the One Per- 
fect Life of the universe, while we are the Over- 
Soul, it is a "we" that has lost the consciousness 
of mere sensuous existence and of the carnal mind 
nourished therefrom. 

Self-education implies many, many facts, facts 
of pain for the most part. Through the dual 
forms of experience man garners the knowledge 
that elevates him from limited to better things, 
Every sorrow is a bright link in the chain of teach- 
ing. Education means to draw out. The very 
word in its original meaning embodies the acme 
of the philosophical signification of knowledge. 
To educate is to draw out, — draw out the latent 
knowledge that resides in the soul. Another 
word that gives the proper interpretation is to 
discover. To discover the mind means that one 
by one the veils of ignorance and sense that cover 
the mind are removed and eventually the mine of 
knowledge is bared to view with its untold wealth 
in grasp. 

He is the seer who has educated his mind into 
a proper conception of Self. He is the deathless 
one, for he is dead to every thought save the 
thought of the superpersonal and infinite Godhead 
within. 



CHANGING YOUR ENVIRONMENT 

One of the greatest facts to be ever remem- 
bered is that we have it within our power to 
change our environment. No matter how much 
you are apparently under its control, you have 
within the depth of the soul the power to annihi- 
late what is hampering your growth. The soul 
may rise supreme over everything. There is 
nothing that can cause it harm, once its sense of 
personal freedom has been awakened by the touch 
of discrimination and understanding. These 
truths have been the source of the great hope and 
the great triumph of those whom history tells 
us have been most sorely tried. In the face of 
seeming despair they held fast to that larger faith 
which blesses the believer with the enlightenment 
of soul and the realization of its power. 

The first step in making a change in undesirable 
environment is to become firm-minded, so that 
the variations of the disturbing condition may not 
affect you. The whole summary of the woes of 
man is the succumbing, the giving up to unpleas- 
ant circumstances the very first moment they ap- 

193 



194 Practical Occultism 

pear. "Principiis obsta," said the Roman poet. 
"Resist beginnings" and half the victory is yours. 
"What can't be cured must be endured" is a false 
proverb. There is nothing but what can be cured 
provided we are acquainted with the methods of 
cure and have the necessary determination of will 
to carry out the methods to success. Had great 
men of Caesarian types for one moment recog- 
nized that certain things were incurable the map 
of Europe would to-day have a different appear- 
ance than it has. The initiative step is the step 
of resistance, the step that asserts mental superi- 
ority over coming troubles, the step that changes 
* the current of seeming trouble so that from dis- 
turbance comes harmony, from ill, good. 

Placing yourself in vibration with any circum- 
stance or force means that you recognize the ex- 
istence of that force. It implies that you set a 
value on it and that this value has a relative im- 
portance to your judgment and will. As this 
value increases, you allow a greater significance 
to the thing valued than to yourself. In other 
words, you underrate yourself. You make a cir- 
cumstance or force superior to your individual 
effort, with the result that you become subordinate 
to the fluctuations of its influence. In every rela- 
tion there is first the external circumstance, then 
the person who is to be affected by the conditions 



Changing Your Environment 195 

of that circumstance. There is a definite distinc- 
tion. This distinction fades, however, as the 
person allows the force of vibration to assert it- 
self even in the slightest degree. The person 
commences to personalize the force and he is, in 
ratio, overcome by it. 

That is the secret of environmental influence. 
If the thought is kept in presence that we are 
something entirely distinct from anything that 
may come into our experience, we are free from 
the bondage of its influence. It is only as we 
identify ourselves with what affects us that we 
become slaves and lose our pristine birthright of 
soul-freedom. 

A practical interpretation of these things in- 
volves the necessity of a man paying close obser- 
vation to what comes into his life. He must be 
ready at whatsoever cost to see the danger-line. 
Most men, owing to the glitter of that line and 
its seductive power, are blinded in discriminat- 
ing at what point undesirable environment ap- 
proaches. It is essential to place a secure and 
true value upon those actions which may lead us 
into a new environment. If they are prompted 
by selfishness no matter in what form, we may 
assure ourselves that we are entering a thorny 
pathway. By selfishness is meant those modes of 
conduct which result in harm to others or imply 



196 Practical Occultism 

a moral infringement or moral omission. Now, 
if such circumstances have been in the foreground 
of any change we are about to make, we can know 
that the change will place us in an uncomfortable 
position. This is one of the important rules to 
be put into practice in the discrimination of what 
is to be good or evil environment. Of one thing 
we can trust, that a change made with spiritual 
intent can never lead to harm. The path may be 
dark and the way indiscernible, but leading will 
come, and with the leading, freedom from ob- 
struction, realization of the intended purpose, and 
the joy of such realization. These truths are 
relative to future environment. They are also 
relative to present environment by the adoption 
of reflex processes. Our present environment is 
directed by our past motives in changing the past 
environment for the present. 

There is no question but that the changing of 
any environment expressly depends on the change 
of our mental attitudes. The mentality is the 
qualifying factor in determining any environment. 
For what to one is an unpleasant, intolerable, 
loathsome environment may to another be the 
most desirable and pleasing. The difference is a 
matter of opinion, of mental attitudes. This is 
only suggestive in so far as it reminds us of the 
possibility of brightening distressing and dark 



Changing Your Environment 197 

surroundings by seeking for the lights which the 
environment clouds. Beneath the most pitiable 
environment is often buried a great spiritual or 
mental treasure or a lesson or readjustment which 
we fail to see, being too occupied with the wor- 
ries of the temporary disquiet. When sorrows 
and trials come, we can often find great relief in 
adjusting the mind so that it searches the good 
and blinds itself to the evil. Such is the spirit of 
resignation which frequently changes environment 
by changing the mind to bear in the hope that 
the fluctuations will bear fruit rather than barren- 
ness. Such is the Christian attitude. 

In connection it might be said that a hopeful 
mental state, a confident trust in those higher as- 
sistant forces which ever come to the aid of him 
who is self-watchful and self-governed, is neces- 
sary. As long as one does right, as long as the 
spiritual is emphasized, as long as inner harmony 
is asserted, there is not the slightest danger of 
being overwhelmed in the hard battles which we 
so often encounter. It is self-evident that when 
a high attitude of mind is held it attracts high 
and helpful forces, the success of whose assistance 
may be relied on. Such mental states have saved 
many from disconsolate thought and enabled them 
to conquer through their mental states and their 
hopes in higher forces when, had they relied 



198 Practical Occultism 

upon themselves, would have miserably failed. 

At times persistence of environment signifies 
stultification of the mind and degeneracy of 
soul. Such environment occurs when the material 
is more at play than the higher mental and ethical. 
There is but one thing to do in these conditions — 
change the environment even if it leads to dis- 
tressing material situation and affliction. Great 
minds who have occasionally found themselves in 
environment where they could not exercise their 
mental faculties are particularly forcible in their 
denunciation of deterioriating environment and in 
their plea for the redemption of mind and soul. 
Nietzsche, that persecuted philosopher whose 
writings are now more deservedly recognized, 
says: "Choice of one's surroundings. — Let us be- 
ware of living amongst those in whose presence 
we can neither observe a dignified silence nor 
communicate our loftier thoughts. We thereby 
grow dissatisfied both with ourselves and our sur- 
roundings; we even add to our distress the dis- 
pleasure of feeling ourselves always plaintive. 
We should live where we are ashamed to speak 
of ourselves, and have no need to do so. But 
who thinks of such things. We speak of our 
'fate/ make a broad back, and sigh, 'Woe to me, 
ill-starred Atlas!' " 

Environment, accordingly, is the limiting or 



Changing Your Environment 199 

developing condition by which the mind and the 
emotions are educated. It behooves him in quest 
of self-unfoldment to select or change his environ- 
ment in accordance with his higher interests. En- 
vironment is one of the specific factors in organic 
evolution and shall ever be. Its adequate im- 
portance in evolving the mind and soul, therefore, 
can not be too definitely pronounced. "We are 
all victims of environment" is a mistake, however, 
at least in this age of New Thought and of higher 
discernment of things spiritual. We are the 
choosers and the makers and the changers of en- 
vironment, if we will be. But the "if is the true 
stumbling-block. No, this does not by any means 
imply that the vastly operative law of Environ- 
ment can be changed. It is a fixed, universal law, 
and law is unchangeable. It is that the prescrip- 
tions, the modifying circumstances of the law may 
be changed as we change, and it is in the choice 
of the change wherein we are free and responsible. 
In a previous paragraph it was stated that plac- 
ing yourself in vibration with any circumstance is 
the recognition of the existence of that circum- 
stance. This is certain, not only in an evil, but 
in a good sense. Many orthodox thinkers have 
challenged the exponents of the New Thought, 
asking how they explain the actual changing of 
conditions by the appliance of respective methods. 



200 Practical Occultism 

In reply, it may be suggested that, in a chemi: 
sense, any environment may be expressed in phys- 
ical terms, for, looking at one side, everything 
is physical and physically evolved and active. 
You may reduce an environment to a certain 
chemical statement. In the same light a person 
may be said to consist of certain chemical constitu- 
ents. Now, no one doubts the influence of one 
chemical activity on another. That material 
which possesses the greatest force will assert the 
dependence of the weaker. In the entire realm 
of chemistry there is no force which has shown 
greater physical importance and influence than the 
force of mind, the force which is becoming daily 
more and more recognized as the final and su- 
preme force in the universe. Accordingly, in the 
change of environment, if greater, if mental force 
be utilized, the environment must change and the 
person remain free. It is pure physical science. 
We shall appreciate this fact in a more desirable 
sense when we come to know the material sub- 
strata of mind, that thought is rarefied matter, 
and has a physical as well as psychical influence. 

Again, the desire for change is more specific 
in evolutionary ends than the determining influ- 
ences of any present environment. Slowly but 
infallibly has the desire for change added wings 
to the bird, feet to the quadruped and civilization 



Changing Your Environment 201 

to man. The desire is the father to the birth of 
the new. In this lies the occult importance of 
desire. It is desire, concentrated and one-pointed, 
persistent and deathly tenacious, which conquers 
the limitations of any environment, be it ever so 
galling. When the thought or rather the knowl- 
edge of the power and the creative influence of 
desire is a mental fact, there is no boundary to 
the efforts and success of him who wishes to 
change his environment. Simple as is the state- 
ment, — he can. Desire is the manifestation of 
the will in activity. The more this activity be- 
comes specialized the more definite and satisfac- 
tory are the results. Thus, placing yourself in 
vibration with any condition means allowing the 
mind to come into contact with it. Successfully 
placing yourself in vibration means throwing the 
balance of influence in favor of the mental, and 
thus, by invoking the greatest of forces, freeing 
yourself from undesirable environment or forcing 
the desirable. 

Indifference to the vibrations of evil environ- 
ment has been considered as one of the main fac- 
tors in its amelioration and change. Why is this? 
If we resume the physical illustration and view 
disturbed mental attitudes as forms of rare mat- 
ter, we readily understand how they invite and 
add to the influence of evil conditions. Indiffer- 



2c: Practical Occultism 

ence means the highest form of activity, — non- 
resistance. Le: the circumstance throw its worst 
influence about you, it can in no way cause you 
hurt if your mind remains undisturbed. You 
invoking self -control, the highest of mental forces, 
and against it the waves of bad vibrations beat 
and beat until they have exhausted their com- 
bative force. By this illustration we can also 
comprehend that much-abused commandment of 
the Christ in which He bids us "not to resist e 
It iocs not mean that you affiliate yourself with 
eviL On the contrary, it means that you e: 
the greatest control and discrimination. 

.There is the greatest psychological value in 
the knowledge that one pes 5 esses the power to 
change environment. It imparts a sense of free- 
dom, of superiority, of transcendence to human 
nature which nothing else can give. Should this 
knowledge ever become established as a fact in 
the ra: !al ronsciousness, it would be of ines- 
timable value in presenting new conditions for the 
betterment of the race at large. Nature has 
tried in many various ways to impress upon the 
human brain its absolute freedom in evolution. 
Occasionally she has introduced such radical 
methods as a French Revolution or a Protestant 
Reformation to teach Man that he can free him- 
self from depressing environment, if he so 



Changing Your Environment 203 

chooses. Nature becomes weary of simply ac- 
centuating the thought that we are free. She 
sometimes throws us on our own resources, con- 
fronts us with Necessity and "Necessity is the 
mother of invention." 

The culture and development of some of the 
moral and mental faculties require an environ- 
ment in which we do not so frequently find our- 
selves. Yet the culture of the mental and the 
moral is the duty which the Law places upon the 
shoulders of him who would be foremost in the 
rank and file of evolution. The crowded mate- 
rial environment, often pampered by the greatest 
of luxury, has been renounced by those who have 
recognized the necessity of personal evolution. 
They have weighed in the balance the material 
comfort and the higher spiritual and have chosen 
the latter. Men of this description are the re- 
ligious sages of every religion. They are men of 
the description of Napoleon, whose thought was 
barely centered on the trappings of his position. 
His mind was solely occupied with his purpose. 
It is not wealth or position which are of them- 
selves to be condemned. It is only the affiliation 
and identification of the mind with these sur- 
roundings which is not wanted. The Oriental 
mind, proficient in all things, has centered its 
great religion of Karma Yoga about this thought. 



204 



Practical Occultism 



Karma Yoga has to do with man's conduct and 
action. Identification with work means that we 
net the good or e*vil results of work. Non-attach- 
ment to our experience means that we are beyond 
both good and evil, have reached the goal for 
which all spiritual energy strives. It follows, 
therefore, that though there are instances where 
the change of environment is a difficult matter, 
yet we can rise above its influence by keeping our 
mind in control and self-centered to one purpose. 
This is not Stoicism, simply regulation of thought 
and control of desire. We must remember that 
proper understanding and effort can actually 
change the circumstances under which we live and 
can rule them to our higher advantage. 



IMPRESSIONS AND INTUITIONS 

Often in life we find ourselves confronted with 
circumstances requiring quickness of decision, the 
adaptation of the entire combative qualities of 
our nature against the odds of circumstances; we 
find ourselves compelled to a spontaneity of dis- 
cernment, an exceptional presence of mind; and, 
unfortunately and only too frequently, we find 
that we are unequal to the occasion; we find our 
rational self undecided, we find it deserting us in 
the hours when its vision and activities are most 
needed; we find ourselves in desperate need and in 
desperate lack of circumstantial necessities. In 
this black hour, in this hour when often life and 
fortune are at stake with little at our command 
to withstand the destructive influences, there has 
arisen in our frequent experience strange feelings 
and stranger impressions which we could never 
harbor in the area of our normal consciousness. 
These impressions come as answers to the wants 
of the soul in the turmoil of anxieties and the tur- 
moil of need; they come as adequate and exact 
answers telling of the course to adopt, and the 

205 



206 Practical Occultism 

requirements to face, and give us a glimpse of 
the approaching triumph over the conflicting cir- 
cumstances. 

You may notice these things in the suddenness 
of direction and command in the word of a gen- 
eral turning imminent defeat into victory; you 
may notice it in the suddenness of decision, where, 
by an intuition, calamities have been avoided in 
national or civic affairs. Coming to the more 
simple and conventional phases of life, you may 
notice them in occurrences when the proper thing 
is intuitively done in sudden illness saving life; 
you may notice it in the rationally unaided im- 
pressions, which, if followed, turn points of dis- 
advantage into advantage, and so forth. 

In spite of our matter-of-fact, practical work-a- 
day, even skeptical, outlook on life; in spite of 
our general waiving aside of the rationally in- 
tangible and the psychically suggestive, we never- 
theless have had our moments when we have 
come to face with the situation previously de- 
scribed. We may laugh at the credulous attitudes 
of those who are persuaded of the mystical and 
the psychical; we may shout our disbelief in all 
things occult to the clouds, and yet, if we are sin- 
cere with ourselves, we must confess to occasions 
when we have been persuaded by the strayest and 
most unintelligible impressions which seemed to 



Impressions and Intuitions 207 

fit in when we otherwise would have thrown up 
our hands in despair. Yet it is not of necessity 
that these intuitions and impressions should in- 
variably accompany the sadder circumstances of 
our experience; they do not exclusively present 
themselves in instances where pressure is brought 
to bear upon the soul, or rise when we are help- 
lessly cornered by uninviting visitations. 

The stray intuitions which come into our life 
are suggestive of a wider range of expression 
from which they proceed, suggestive of a faculty 
of which they are but incoherent phases. Their 
development and the accompanying development 
of the faculty would lead to marvelous results, to 
the evolution of what, in the occult, is known as 
the "higher manas" in psychological terms, the 
subjective mind with its thousand-fold variety of 
faculty and superiority over the normal mind and 
consciousness of objective life. It would lead 
to the development of that higher and powerful 
self within each of us which meets all the trials 
and tribulations of the normal self with equal 
serenity and triumph. These intuitions may 
come as sporadic but definite warnings of the soul 
discountenancing the objective self in the practice 
of moral uncertainties ; they may come as glimpses 
which, later evolved, educate the soul into higher 
aspects of truth; they may come as soul-instruc- 



208 Practical Occultism 

tions in the hour of soul-suicide and depressions, 
reminding the lower self of the immortal nature 
and spiritual transcendency of the higher self over 
the passing calamities and indecisions which come 
as trials to strengthen and fortify. They may 
come as intuitional ties binding the soul in ardent 
friendship with the new personality in our ex- 
perience; they may come as faintest impressions 
re-vibrating unto the soul something unifying in 
the past life of two souls, causing them either to 
love or hate ; they may come as symbols of future 
occurrences, as notes of meaningless sadness and, 
laf:er, this sadness evolves into the separations or 
losses of friends or belongings. 

All these variations of intuitional manifesta- 
tions have certain attributes giving them a com- 
mon origin, a common significance of soul and a 
common working order whereby an understand- 
ing may be reached of their generic nature. In 
the first they are never witnessed in the common- 
place or unimportant by-ways of our life ; they do 
not appear in the trivial and the ordinary. They 
manifest in the solemn and the silent, in the im- 
portant and the exceptional, in the dangerous cir- 
cumstance and the undecided moments of soul. 
They come when there is need only, when a con- 
dition arises when the soul is unequal to occasions 
and where its defeat may mean retardation or 



Impressions and Intuitions 209 

perhaps retrogression. They are particularly 
unique in that they shine forth in suddenness and 
almost constantly when the mind has been par- 
alyzed into inaction and exhaustion through hours 
of persistent and brain-racking effort to break 
down barriers of opposition, of uncertainty, and 
so forth. When the mind has turned over its 
last thought, when it has weakened into absolute 
despair, then it is receptive, and in these moments 
of receptivity and objective silence of mind, the 
higher self with its intuitions and impressions, 
enters the threshold of normal consciousness and 
resuscitates the lower with the higher poise of 
the greater self. They bring it quietness and pa- 
tience, and then suddenly flash the especial intui- 
tion of the circumstance across the brain. Yet 
these intuitions do not occur to the mind and soul 
alone. They may affect the body. Frequently, 
and in the experience of most of us, there have 
been cases where an intuition saved life. The 
daily journals cite any number of them. Only 
recently in the city of Trenton, N. J., a man was 
saved from a falling building by following a sud- 
den impulse to cross the street. Then there are 
specific instances where by following intuitions 
the right thing has been done at the right time in 
the burning of houses, in burglarious attack, and 
so forth. Intuitions of a lower class may be 



210 Practical Occultism 

found advising the normal consciousness in serious 
business transactions where a feeling, seemingly 
irrational and antagonizing the promising side of 
a circumstance, may result in success and increased 
material fortune. 

The nature of intuition defies reason in the 
explanation. It partakes of something intangible 
and imperceptible to objective consciousness, 
something which in the accuracies of rational con- 
sciousness is not to be found, for it is beyond rea- 
son. It is something suggestive of a faculty more 
in the immediate keeping with Truth, truer in its 
expression and more direct in its perception. It 
partakes of that larger method of discernment 
which does not stop at every immediate turning of 
thought as does reason; it reaches conclusions by 
flashes. Those who have experienced these 
things in life are aware of the truth of the asser- 
tion. They have seen that obedience to an im- 
pulse, to an intuition, to an impression is asso- 
ciated with happy findings, and that when they 
have discountenanced these psychic meanings they 
have accordingly suffered. 

Intuition, it must be observed, is a faculty not 
solely enjoyed by human beings. It is to a great- 
er or less degree enjoyed by the lower creatures. 
It might be safely stated that the majority of 
vertebrated animals, particularly the domesti- 



Impressions and Intuitions 211 

cated species, live intuitive lives in the complete- 
ness. They form their likes and dislikes, their 
sympathies and their antipathies with a remark- 
able intuitiveness that we frequently notice in the 
house pets. They intuitively sense danger, sepa- 
ration, coming death, and so forth. Their in- 
tuitions are often the means whereby serious trou- 
ble is averted to their owners. The relationships, 
for instance, between the dog and its master is 
intuitive in the extreme. Its intuitive faculty is 
in many cases so developed that it readily under- 
stands the plans of the master when he is dis- 
cussing them. He cannot rationally understand; 
it is simple intuition. 

Intuition, according to the occultists, is a fac- 
ulty of the subjective mind, of the larger ego with 
its higher discernment, its wider view, its more 
unselfish view, its more accurate and unbiased at- 
titudes. It is never false. Its flashes are cri- 
terions of certainty, of moral seership, of deep 
vision in the practical values of even work-a-day 
life. We should never discredit its expression. 

Affiliated, as it is, with the higher self, the 
development of the intuitional faculties and their 
consequent assistance in life, will depend in every 
particular upon the development of those ele- 
ments of our objective consciousness which are 
more intimately blended with the higher self. 



212 Practical Occultism 

And these links between the subjective and the 
objective are the moral side of our nature, the 
higher rational side, the possibilities of concen- 
tration of the mind along the nobler ways, the 
spirit of unselfishness. The larger ego within us 
is the more spiritual, and by the development of 
the spiritual elements in the objective self a bond 
is established which will be strengthened in a ratio 
of continuous relationship, until, finally, as the 
objective self becomes entirely spiritualized, it 
becomes absorbed within the greater self. Then 
intuition will be the guiding star in every way of 
life. Reason will have been set aside for direct 
perception. For there is a spiritual phase of in- 
tuition, not only that which concerns itself with 
the mortal needs of man. There is that phase 
which seeks the path of the soul, the untrammeled 
path which leads to the realization of spiritual 
truths and spiritual vision, the path which, if trod- 
den, leads the soul into the understanding of its, 
inner glories and powers, its infinite variableness 
of expression, its divine essence, its imperishable 
identity with the sublime spiritual power back of 
nature and consciousness itself. When this high- 
er mode of intuition is persistently sought, when 
the effort becomes a permanent activity of the 
soul, greater and greater vistas of soul possibili- 



Impressions and Intuitions 



213 



ties and soul heights open, and the glory of the 
consummation of these things is such "of which 
no eye hath ever seen or of which no ear hath 
heard." 



COMMENTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
GOOD AND EVIL 

No matter where we direct our attention we 
iind two forms of sensations : those which are 
classed as the good, the pleasing, and those which 
are classed as the evil and the painful. Probably 
the entire complexities of life could come under 
this dual heading. Good and evil are only intel- 
lectual terms for their physical counterparts, 
pleasure and pain. These dual conceptions have 
given rise to a dual interpretation of life, the 
one representing the principle of good, the other 
the principle of evil, both embodied in respective 
systems of thought — the Philosophy of Good and 
the Philosophy of Evil. 

This digression into physical explanations is 
necessitated in order to depart from the erroneous 
methods of considering these philosophies in an 
historical light whence repeated confusions and 
differences have ever arisen. To gain a proper 
intellectual survey of their origin we must con- 
sider on what physical and sense premises they 
have been exploited. 

214 



Philosophy of Good and Evil 215 

It is scientifically known that all ideas have 
their evolutionary origin in the indefinite, in- 
coherent, simplest rudimentary forms of the sen- 
sations of the earliest beginnings of Life, gradu- 
ally increasing in definiteness, coherency, gradu- 
ally unfolding correspondingly more and more de- 
cided psychological relations until finally, through 
the interchangings of complex sensations and re- 
sponsive complex conditions of mind, the hetero- 
geneity of thought and emotion is attained. In 
this manner, through immense lapses of time, the 
physical ideas of space, of duration and succes- 
sion of events, and the religious and philosophical 
conceptions of absoluteness of being have been 
evolved. Our infinitely intricate civilization, to- 
gether with its totality of thought and feeling, 
is therefore founded on the commencements of 
sensation of the first particles of Life, developing 
with the suppression of the gaseous conditions of 
the earth's surface. Every thought and feeling 
that we entertain, including the idea of good and 
evil, have their ancestral tracings in the sense 
experiences of the animalculae and protozcea, and 
even farther, into the primary condition of things. 

Reasoning from this physical basis, the first 
advantage which either of the philosophies will 
possess over the other is in a deeper reality in 
conscious experience and knowledge. Returning 



216 Practical Occultism 

to our sense deductions, it is evident that pain is 
the greater physical reality. The sensation of 
pain is associated with the agonies of contraction 
of muscles and tension of nerves, and, naturally, 
the impression of the painful sensation makes 
an indelibly greater emotional and mental reality 
in brain consciousness than does the sensation of 
pleasure, which is accompanied with the exhilarat- 
ing experiences of physical relaxation. Pain, be- 
ing the deeper event in the facts of bodily and 
mental life, it follows that the philosophy of its 
causes and operations will have a deeper psycho- 
logical influence and a deeper philosophical con- 
viction than the Philosophy of Good. 

If the Philosophy of Good is considered from 
an ethical point of view, the first investigation to 
be made is on what permanent ideas of right and 
wrong it establishes itself. Right and wrong are 
the ethical expressions through racial experience 
of the influences of physical pain and pleasure, of 
good and evil, as they affect the majorities and 
the race generally. These expressions change 
with the varying experiences and conceptions of 
ages and times as to what is right and what is 
wrong. They possess no stability, for what to- 
day is virtue, generations hence may be considered 
viciously degraded forms, just as we recall the 
moral conceptions of ancestors from completely 



Philosophy of Good and Evil 217 

different points of view than were originally 
ascribed. Here again, right has its ultimate 
physical bearings in that which is physically or 
emotionally pleasing to the greatest number, 
while what is pleasing to a minor number is con- 
versely termed "wrong." This is the solution of 
the great problems of ethics, the tracings of ani- 
mal sensation racially modified, and intellectually 
and ethically evolved to higher expressions, 
There is no absolute condition of right and of 
wrong, because innovations of evolutionary 
methods and the gaining experience of Man, as 
a race, will alter every new conception of the two. 
Ethically, therefore, the Philosophy of Good and 
the Philosophy of Evil are equal in significance, 
the former possessing no superiority from logical 
inferences. 

The emotional influences of the two philoso- 
phies is witnessed in their respective force in char- 
acterizing motives for conduct. Religion has, for 
the greater part, embodied these influences and 
expresses them in her promises of good, pleasing 
conditions, both here and hereafter, for right con- 
duct, and in her threats of evil, painful conditions, 
both here and hereafter, for wrong conduct. 
She presents a heaven of physical pleasures and 
sensorial good and a hell of physical torment and 
sense evils — all having physical findings. Again, 



2l8 



Practical Occultism 



the hope of reward and the threat of punishment 
are factors in civic relations for conduct. Which 
has the greater influence over the emotional ele- 
ment in human nature, the idea of heaven or hell, 
the idea of reward or punishment? If we re- 
member the argument of the inferiority of 
pleasure as a physical fact, and the greater mean- 
ing of pain, we need not digress into ramifications. 
The philosophical reasonings concerning good 
and evil are of greater importance, however, and 
especially to-day, when a system of thought em- 
bracing good and denying evil is exerting so much 
attention. The unprejudiced thinker understands 
that, in this world of diversity, every phenomenon 
is subject to change and relativity. There is no 
fixedness from which could be inferred any estab- 
lishing principle concerning the relationships of 
cosmic forces and their expressions unless we dare 
to scientifically nullify this manifoldness of nature 
into a physical, unifying principle, then into an in- 
telligent, unifying principle, and finally into an im- 
personal, unqualified, immutable and unknowable 
principle. The philosopher, therefore, recognizes 
that good and evil have their origin, limitations 
and endings in the relative and the changeable. 
We must either take this position or else deny 
our sense experiences which inevitably show us the 
passing and temporal even in the greatest of all 



Philosophy of Good and Evil 219 

phenomena, and of course we must similarly deny 
all intellectual inferences arising from our sense 
perceptions- — in other words, we must deny our 
personal existence. This is the position of Chris- 
tian Science, which, in spite of its idealism versus 
realism, cannot explain the origin of matter, error 
and evil which the Eddy philosophy evidently 
came to dispense with by a simple, meaningless 
denial. Everything, to some extent, is a matter 
of suggestion, and it may be that if they continue 
to think and think that there is nothing but Good, 
evolution will, by a paradoxically retrogressive 
process, undo its work of bodily formation and 
resultant sensorial development and leave the be- 
lievers bodiless, sensationless, everything-less. 
They will be physical nonentities and spiritual en- 
tities, but how they explain existence without sen- 
sation or consciousness passes the most imagina- 
tive fancy. Again, in her imperative categories, 
Mrs. Eddy has unfortunately forgotten to explain 
"why" error and evil should exist even if only 
as a shadow in some unimaginable fashion along- 
side of the omnipresence, omnipotence and om- 
niscience of Spirit. 

Adherents to this one-sided philosophy say that 
it is possible for the intellect to comprehend Good 
in the abstract as an unquestionable and absolute 
principle. To this it may be replied that it is 



220 Practical Occultism 

possible for the intellect to comprehend Evil in 
the abstract as an unquestionable and absolute 
principle. To identify God with Good is to say 
that we know something about Him. What can 
we know of an impersonal Being without qualities, 
who would be instantly limited and rendered finite, 
should finite, mortal intelligence discover His 
attributes. Just as our Self of selves forever es- 
capes analysis, it being the Analyzer of its own 
states of consciousness, so is that Imperishable 
Being, the Self of existence, beyond the simpler 
understanding of creatures, for It is the Eternal, 
Omnipresent Subject. The theory of supremacy 
of Good is not new. It is a modern plagiarism 
and a modern adaptation of Platonic philosophy. 
From a numerical point of view the Philosophy 
of Evil possesses a larger constituency than the 
Philosophy of Good, and exerts a wider racial 
importance, for it is the practical, every-day 
philosophy of the teeming millions of the East 
and a growing following of Western thinkers, 
who incline towards the conceptions of Schopen- 
hauer and the school of German and French 
pessimists. 

Is Life ethically good or is it ethically evil? 
Good and pleasure have their indefinite sources 
in the personalities of the selfish and the pleasing. 
Arguing over intellectual uncertainties can never 



Philosophy of Good and Evil 221 

persuade the philosopher that Good is much else 
than the expression of a tremendous cosmic sel- 
fishness and unrest which finds its outlet in the 
alternations of the universe. 

As in physical experiences there is a tendency 
towards least resistance, and so in mental experi- 
ences the system of the philosophically Good is 
the mode of this his tendency. To argue with the 
leaders or representatives of these cults is useless, 
for they reason in a circle and thus avoid the 
otherwise stumbling-block of logic and of material 
facts as defined by our conscious experience. Life 
is too short to listen to word-mincers; they are 
simply philosophical gymnasts who might as easily 
disprove what they prove while using the same 
methods of argumentation. 



PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS 
THE NATURE OF REALITY 



ON 



All knowledge, all science, is based on the or- 
der and the aggregate of human experience from 
the primary sense observations of uncivilized man 
to the complex sense intuitions of the highest de- 
veloped humanity assisted by the mathematical 
accuracies and unerring measurements in the vari- 
ous departments of science. That which comes 
under immediate sense perception, and that which 
is equal at all times to the common experience of 
every individual of the race as a species, has al- 
ways been and always will be the basis of all 
reality, and wherever an effort has been made 
to establish some new phase of reality, there has 
also been an appeal to past experience, so as to 
point out the feasibility of the new. If you want 
to prove some new theory it can be done only 
by referring to a host of old, accepted-as-reality 
theories, which, in turn, are founded on the earli- 
est of sense conclusions corresponding to certain 
realities in nature which are invariable in their 
order, persistent and recurring with perpetual pre- 



222 



Philosophical Reflections 223 

eision, such as the changes of the seasons, the 
alternations of day and night, the phenomena of 
birth and growth, decay or death. Even in the 
animal world there is an instinctive recognition 
of a fundamental reality based on law-abiding 
and continuously repeating occurrences in the 
outer world, in accordance with which any num- 
ber of creatures instinctively make preparations 
for phenomena at times happening in a compara- 
tively distant future. This, for example, is in- 
stanced in the migration of many bird species an- 
ticipating the arrival of different seasons. 

In man this recognition of the persistence and 
recurrence of certain phenomena, constituting the 
reality in nature, is highly specialized, and the 
instinctive fore-knowledge of the season on the 
part of birds is eclipsed, through unthinkable 
aeons of evolution, by the fore-knowledge of 
planetary motions on the part of the astronomer 
— and yet the latter faculty is only an extension of 
the degree in perception of the former. Thus 
the first and essential phase of reality is the 
perceptible reality in nature common to all beings 
and to which all beings agree. 

The complete aggregate of sense experiences 
and corresponding sense knowledge is, therefore, 
strict reality and strict truth. We have seen how 
the animal world has foresight of natural events 



224 Practical Occultism 

and how it prepares itself accordingly. Such a 
process might be provisionally termed "instinctive 
reasoning," for it is the adaptation, no matter 
how primitive, of intelligence to facts which are 
out of immediate sense observation, out of the 
immediate range of sight or touch or any of the 
senses — facts which are presaged. In man this 
"instinctive reasoning" has been developed to an 
incomparable degree. "Instinctive reasoning" is 
instinctive inference from certain given facts; it 
involves the classification of phenomena and 
variating attitudes of consciousness with regard 
to them; it is the evolutionary commencement of 
that which has reached its greatest possibility in 
human nature — reason as embodied in philosophy. 
Philosophy is therefore the activity of reason 
in associating and classifying phenomena, not in 
the limited sense that the animal classifies occur- 
rences in its narrow vicinity and area of conscious- 
ness, but in a sense universal which reviews the 
general as well as the particular, which observes 
the occurrences of nature not only on the plane 
of the earth but in the farthest distances of space. 
Thus the instinctive, the instinctive and the semi- 
rational and the rational are intimately blended. 
With this latter thought in view, the argument 
of many materialistic schools that sense observa- 
tion is the only means of knowledge and that all 



Philosophical Reflections 225 

speculation from sense premises is vain, is incon- 
ceivable. The very inferences of philosophy 
which they are condemning are the outgrowth of 
the immediate sense inferences involved in the 
simplest acts of consciousness, such as that I know 
if I put my hand on a heated surface I infer that 
it will be burned. Just as the calculations of the 
astronomers are elaborate sense inferences, so the 
highest speculations of the philosopher are simi- 
larly elaborate inferences having their ultimate 
basis in the realities we observe in the external 
world. 

Philosophy is accordingly the synthesized con- 
ception of human knowledge based, in turn, on 
the sense realities objective to consciousness. 
The system of thought which violates this aggre- 
gated knowledge, partializing it into the errone- 
ous or superstitious either through ignorance or 
through policy, is adjudged less or more crude 
as it is compared with systems of thought kindred 
in origin. The philosophy which, to the best of 
its ability, exercises a rational and scientifically 
discriminating attitude to the entirety of human 
knowledge is compared in surpassing order until 
that system of thought is considered which most 
satisfactorily agrees with the aggregate of human 
experience and most satisfactorily answers the 
queries of the mind concerning the world- 



226 Practical Occultism 

problems and the relation of humanity to them. 
All human experience is based on the relation 
of consciousness through the senses with the ex- 
ternal world, the relation of consciousness with 
what is not consciousness. This is the primary 
truth, the specific origin and common element in 
all philosophy; but at the same time it is their 
point of divergence, for in the different interpre- 
tation of this primary truth, in the difference of 
viewpoint of this reality, are engendered such 
extremely separated attitudes as materialistic 
monism, qualified aspects of materialistic monism, 
variations of idealism ranging from the vagaries 
* of the distorted metaphysics we see about us even 
at present unto more possible and definite ideal- 
istic conceptions, until at length we come to the 
sublime spiritual monism embodied in the teach- 
ings of the early Christian mystics, of the Bud- 
dhists and the Brahmans, of the Eleusinian, Mi- 
thraic and Samothracian mystics of antiquity, and 
of the followers of the new psychology and the 
later science of to-day. But the primary truth — 
the relation of consciousness to what is external 
to it, to what is not consciousness — is present in 
every philosophy as a necessary fundamentalism. 
Even deniers of the existence of matter and sense 
experience affirm the existence, even though in a 
negative sense, of something extraneous to "spirit- 



Philosophical Reflections 227 

ual" consciousness which stands in relationship to 
it and is called "mortal mind" or some kindred 
mental abortion. Yet in the extreme they are 
not to be criticised, for in the end they are right 
— not in their final attitude, but in their respective 
sectarian attitude, in which light even materialism 
is correct. All partial views of the universe are 
true in a partial light; it is only when the sup- 
porters of this and that partial view universalize 
it as the final expression of truth that they are 
guilty of the absurd and merit the contempt of 
the true philosopher. Truth is final and uni- 
versal. It is a fixed principle and voices itself 
to the human mind in continuously developing as- 
pects until finally, according to the receptivity of 
the most evolved group of the race, it indelibly 
blends itself with the mind and voice of man. As 
truth is one and final, therefore, in the end, all 
partial views must merge into the highest con- 
ception of truth. Partial views are bred of igno- 
rance, of sectarianism, of the personal and the 
selfish. When these are removed, the partial 
evolves into the unsectarian and the universal. 
Truth knows itself in all forms, and, even as the 
bee sips only the honey of the flower, the disciple 
of truth only selects truth, leaving the form to 
the dispensations of the temporary. 

Reality and truth, then, are inseparable. One 



228 Practical Occultism 

is the complement of the other; one infers the 
other; where one is found the other must be. 
Reality, as has been previously stated, is the sum- 
total of human experience; truth, in its objective 
sense, the highest synthesized inference from that 
sum-total. Reality is the perfect symbol of the 
knowable universe, and, understanding its generic 
nature, we understand the infinitesimal number 
of problems and truths and principles which it 
embraces — all subordinate to the solution of the 
essence of reality itself. Therefore in the dim 
Aryan forests, ages upon ages ago, the sage, leav- 
. ing particulars to the scrutiny of our present cen- 
tury with its microscopic and telescopic measure- 
ments — centering his mind on generalizations and 
the ultimate, universal reality, asked: "What is 
that, knowing which, this entire universe shall be 
known?" Or, again, even as the Zoroastrian 
youth of old asked of Ahuramazda : "What, O 
Ahura, is the nature of the permutations of life 
and death; what is the nature of reality; what, O 
Ahura, am I who ask this of Thee?" In these 
queries of the sages of the ancient days we observe 
the same mental attitude which has characterized 
humanity ever since the dawn of the rational in- 
stinct and has persisted throughout the ages until 
the present time and will persist as long as man 
thinks. There is the same question: What is 



Philosophical Reflections 229 

the external world and what is the world of con- 
sciousness and what constitutes reality? An ulti- 
mate criterion of truth regarding these queries 
can alone give an establishing principle whereon 
to found a consistent system of thought and a 
correspondingly consistent system of ethics — a 
criterion of truth which in its invariableness and 
everlasting certainty will equal the invariableness 
and everlasting certainty of that principle which 
has shadowed its truth in the unerring laws of the 
universe. 

In the attempt to solve the nature of reality as 
far as that is possible to human intelligence, two 
things are to be taken into consideration — exter- 
nal nature and the inner consciousness manifest 
everywhere, which is asleep in the chemical, min- 
eral and vegetal element, which dreams in the 
animal, which has awakened in man, and which 
is gradually and gradually more evolved in the 
range of intelligence above man. The two ques- 
tions present themselves — what reality do we find 
in the objective world of phenomena? what reality 
in the subjective world of consciousness? Or 
does, perhaps, the nature of reality transcend both 
the objective and the subjective; is, perhaps, what- 
ever reality in these two only a finite, evanescent 
reflection of a deeper and vaster reality which 
fathers their expression, which interpenetrates 



230 Practical Occultism 

them in every centre of their life, and, constitut- 
ing their sole existence, constitutes likewise the 
sole existence, the sole truth, the sole reality 
throughout illimitable space and illimitable mind. 
The materialists say that reality exists alone in 
the objective world of our senses and sense sur- 
roundings, that reality is comprised in the real 
things we feel, see, hear and so forth; the ideal- 
ists say that it exists solely as Mind Universal — 
that everything , tangible and concrete is but an 
evolved symbol of a more permanent idea; abso- 
lute spiritual monists say that it is neither the 
objective nor the subjective which embodies real- 
ity; that reality implies the changeless, the eter- 
nal, the unconditioned, and that therefore we can- 
not find it either in the dominion of matter or 
mind, both of which are subject to change, to 
modification, both of which have a beginning in 
the relative, the temporary, and must therefore 
disintegrate at the disintegration of the causal 
principles which have projected the phenomenal 
universe ; that both are the outcome of evolution, 
and therefore that both will have their ending in 
the workings of dissolution. 

In this last position we have the assertion of 
a reality which does not deny whatever reality 
there is in the temporary arrangements of things 
either subjective or objective, which, in fact, in- 



Philosophical Reflections 231 

eludes them, while at the same time nullifying 
them into an ultimate reality above all limitations 
which is their true manifesting cause, and, there- 
fore, alone worth the final attentions of the 
philosopher. As this attitude is most all-inclusive 
and most possible, it is best to proceed accord- 
ingly. 

An examination into the external world will 
lead us to some very interesting conclusions. We 
shall see that while the phenomenal world is real, 
it is so only in a relative sense. Observations 
of consciousness will terminate in a similar find- 
ing. The existence of both consciousness and the 
world will be seen to be naught in comparison 
with a larger existence which includes them — 
which is them. 

We hear so much about sense realities and the 
imperative necessity of remembering at all times 
that concrete objects exist. Now let us see just 
in how far reality does exist in objective life. 
What do we know of the universe external to con- 
sciousness? Only the sensations resulting from 
the interactions of the outside world with con- 
sciousness, and the rational inferences evolved 
through associating and classifying these sensa- 
tions at first into simple, semi-complex, then into 
complex, general and finally into universal truths 
regarding the operations of that which is the 



232 Practical Occultism 

"not-self" of consciousness. How real, though, 
and how all-inclusive are our sensations from 
which we draw our philosophies? The latter 
have been continually modified by the better un- 
derstanding of sense experiences. At first the 
thunder, the lightning and other phenomena were 
interpreted crudely as being the work of agents 
back of nature, and the philosophy and theology 
of those times was according. Later, natural 
events were more properly interpreted, and we 
had the philosophy of the seventeenth, eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries. Now when science tells 
us that all we know of nature is the sensations we 
' receive, psychology takes the advance of the sci- 
ences and philosophy assumes the position that 
phenomenal reality exists only as modes of con- 
sciousness^ — the position which the Buddha 
avowed five centuries before the advent of the 
Christian era. 

What do we know of any object? Only what 
the limited number of Hvq senses report to the 
brain, or, even more accurately stated, only the 
resultant action in the form of knowledge of the 
operations of external pressure. The external vi- 
bration has wrought an impression in the brain 
and called forth a state of consciousness, and 
this state of consciousness, this reflex activity of 
the mind in responding to sense vibrations, is the 



Philosophical Reflections 233 

only knowledge we possess of the external con- 
dition which has shadowed itself on the retina of 
the eye or on the receptacle of any of the senses, 
and which has been carried to the mind through 
the activities of the sensory nerves and contermin- 
ous molecular changes in the brain. The only 
reality so far is the mental consciousness. But, 
it is objected, the object itself has any number 
of real-objective aspects and vibrations of which 
we cannot become conscious owing to the limita- 
tions of our nervous system. Remembering that 
all that we know of any object is simply the re- 
sultant sensation, then any increased number of 
aspects and vibrations of an object would only be 
so many increased degrees in the possibility of 
sense perception and states of consciousness. For 
the sake of illustration: Supposing we were pos- 
sessed of four additional senses with respective 
organs, their functions and with respective nerve 
operations, then any of the objects we see every 
day would be presented to our minds from nine 
rather than five points of view — the area of con- 
sciousness and the possibility of sensation would 
be added to by four degrees. Or, considering the 
matter in a different light, supposing we were 
limited to but four or two senses, then we could 
become conscious of an object only in a double or 
treble fashion — in other words, the area of con- 



234 Practical Occultism 

seriousness and sensation would be limited in ratio. 
Creation presents itself in myriads of expressions 
according to the nature and limitations and ex- 
pansions in the area of consciousness. Although 
we have given previous instances, take the case 
of a man blind from birth gaining his sight in 
later life, the undeveloped condition of the new 
faculty would make him at first see things in an 
exactly opposite view from ourselves. To him 
spheres would be cubes and other dimensions of 
form would correspondingly appear different. 
His eyes, as yet unaccustomed to assistance by the 
muscular and tactual senses, would be unaware 
• either of distance, shape or solidity, as the only 
impressions of which the retina would take cog- 
nizance would be those of color and indirectly of 
superficial extension. For this reason, like the 
child, he might stretch forth his hand for the 
moon. 

All knowledge of the outer world, therefore, is 
founded on the quality of sensation which arises in 
the area of consciousness at external physical con- 
tact. This is the extreme of science. As Pro- 
fessor Ziehen puts it: "These facts reveal the 
obvious error of former centuries, first refuted by 
Locke, though still shared by naive thought to- 
day, that the objects we see about us themselves 
are colored, warm, cold, etc. As external to con- 



Philosophical Reflections 235 

seriousness, we can only assume matter, vibrating 
with molecular motion and permeated by vibrat- 
ing particles of ether." The ideas of space and 
the perception of qualities such as color, heat, 
form, dimension, etc., are all educated concep- 
tions of consciousness, for the baby, if in pain, has 
no idea of the locality of pain. Likewise it is only 
by the development of consciousness that it be- 
comes aware of its body as distinguishable from 
other objects. And the life of the baby is a com- 
pendium of the indefinite conscious experience of 
the race as a whole which it underwent in its 
primary life and when it inhabited inferior forms. 
Further examination into the nature of external 
pressure will support the view that sensations are 
all that we know of the phenomena about us. 
In what does this external pressure consist which 
has produced a state of consciousness? Merely 
in modes of motion and the intensities of these 
modes. Given a certain intensity of vibration of 
air and you have sound, another intensity in the 
undulations of ether and you have light and color 
variations. The modifications of motion as they 
affect consciousness ultimately give rise to the per- 
ception of the entire phenomena of the external 
world. The external world consists of simple 
motions — the inner, psychic world of sensations 
and their associative operations ; and, through the 



236 Practical Occultism 

evolution of these sensations into complex sensa- 
tions, percepts and concepts, qualities are super- 
imposed on these external motions. Thus the 
delicate green of the trees, the azure of the skies, 
the songs of the birds, the perfume of flowers, 
the forms of mountains, dales, rivers and stars, 
is the echo in the soul of soundless, colorless, 
formless motions without. Our sense experience 
rebels at the relegation of the beautiful in nature 
to motion, but what is sense experience other than 
the mother of deception? Unassisted sense ex- 
perience tells us that the moon is, of itself, light- 
imparting, that the sun moves, that the horizon 
kisses the flat surface of perspectives, that the 
stars are small points of light, that the earth is 
flat, and the list of deceptions could continue to 
the indefinite. Reason has corrected these no- 
tions, and science and psychology have likewise 
proven that external phenomena are not what 
they appear 1 - — that they are only exciting causes 
of effects which appear in our conscious life as 
sensations. Thus the seeming reality of objects 
and the entire objective world fade into nothing- 
ness, leaving only sensation and the exciting causes 
of sensation, waves of motion. This we know, 
but how certain motions are translated into sen- 
sations is inexplicable. This is the great gap in 



Philosophical Reflections 237 

the science of life which, up to the present, re- 
mains insolvable. We have reached the point 
where we realize that, in its undeveloped state, or 
rather, as unaffected by consciousness, nature is 
simply motion. It is only by consciousness that 
the variations of matter and motion are inter- 
preted as objects and qualities of objects. And 
for this reason an eminent authority has said: 
"Matter is simply the permanent possibility of 
sensation." Therefore the phenomenal world 
has but two permanently real aspects — the one 
of exciting causes in the form of motions; the 
other, states of consciousness. Ultimately we 
shall see how even these blend into a higher sub- 
jective unity. For the medium by which external 
physical contact is modulated into sensation — on 
our plane of being, the nervous system — is also 
the product of motion, and as this medium in 
every atom of its composition is the concrete 
results of changes in consciousness, we get a 
partial glimpse of the unity of consciousness, with 
its medium of relationship in various planes of 
the universe, and finally, of the unity of conscious- 
ness with all forms and forces, all vibrations of 
motion, which alone exist in the area of its per- 
ception. This latest thought is the argument for 
the hypothesis of science that every atom of the 



238 Practical Occultism 

universe is a particle of sentiency, and that the 
sum-total of this sentiency is the Absolute Exist- 
ence, the Absolute Reality we call God. 

In another phase in the examination into the 
external world we observe the previously men- 
tioned medium by which consciousness and the ex- 
ternal vibrations come in contact. We find that 
the most important feature in the morphology of 
any organism, whether of the earth-plane or of 
any plane of the universe, is, without question, 
the transmitting medium of sense perceptions 
whereby sense impressions and reflex sensations 
are coherently synthesized and correlated. This 
medium is the means by which the spirit of any 
form can come into vibration and sense contact 
with respective plane relationships and their ex- 
periences — by which, in other words, it can live. 
By the qualitative development of this medium is 
measured the standard of its physical, emotional 
and psychical probabilities. In every dimension 
and vibration of life there is a kindred medium 
for the transmission of sense experiences and their 
parallelisms, and, on planes respectively lower or 
higher, this medium, in a greater or less suscepti- 
bility, similarly serves as an instrument through 
which the universe's myriads of spirits can evi- 
dence consciousness and gain evolutionary experi- 
ences. Though apart from the subject, it might 



Philosophical Reflections 239 

be suggested that according as this medium in its 
susceptibility overlaps the normal faculties of con- 
sciousness on its respective plane of operation 
either to the plane above or the plane below, we 
have the phenomena of spirit communication, 
whether the communication be between entities 
resident on the earth-plane and the plane of the 
departed or between entities resident on Mars 
and its psychic, subjective plane, or entities in any 
other space dimension. Without this medium no 
relative life were possible. It is through it that 
the qualities of any object, including color, size, 
form and so forth, are interpreted to conscious- 
ness, so that, according as this medium is service- 
able in different vibrations of life, and according 
to its respective condition and activity, the same 
object will appear in an extremely manifold 
variety. As an instance of this take any of the 
hundreds of objects surrounding us and let it be 
perceived by beings living in bi-dimensional space 
or by beings with different conceptions of length, 
breadth or of thickness, or by beings living in 
different aspects of matter and force, or, again, 
by beings with even higher developed understand- 
ing of form and the qualities of form and of di- 
mension than is possessed by human beings — and 
who will limit the possibilities under which matter 
and force present themselves and the endless 



240 Practical Occultism 

variety of perception — then such an ordinary ob- 
ject as a stone would radiate in an almost infinite 
variableness of aspects so that the mind pauses in 
wonder at the idea. A two-space creature would 
see it .as a flat object; we would see it in its height, 
length and breadth ; a fish would see it as exagger- 
atedly elongated with more or less depreciation 
of thickness; beings living on the plane above us, 
in fourth-dimensional space, although to us the 
stone is opaque, to them it would be transparent 
and possess only the barest appearance of solidity. 
Thus the various aspects would continue as long 
as beings with a different medium of transmission 
• of sense objects would observe the stone. And 
here it might be stated that even the most com- 
monplace object is immortal. What right have 
we to say that when we shatter a glass vessel we 
have destroyed that which is the essence or even 
that which was its physical cause ? What have we 
destroyed? Only the appearance of that object 
in tri-dimensional space. And, if we remember 
that any object is but a sense consciousness of an 
exciting cause, a physical motion, what right have 
we to say that we have destroyed the possibility 
of the perception of that motion in other modes 
of life? Destroy it in this mode, and, were you 
clairvoyant, you could discern it on the plane im- 
mediately above. When we have destroyed any- 



Philosophical Reflections 241 

thing it is only the effect of a certain cause, which 
is beyond our grasp, and this cause remains and 
vibrates as a certain effect in some other aspect 
of matter and force. We have destroyed the 
form, the phenomenal appearance of that which 
has manifested itself on our plane as a glass, but 
we have not annihilated the spirit, so to speak, of 
that object. Again, that very glass vessel must 
at some time appear in the same shape and other 
qualities which it possessed previous to its shat- 
tering. Take a pair of dice and throw them. 
They fall in a certain order. Continue and you 
find that order changing, yet the time must come, 
though it may be after immense intervals, when 
the initial order will again appear. Thus with 
the entire world and its phenomena. These 
bodies we have, these surroundings, these same 
conditions, will renew themselves — with the only 
difference that other consciousnesses will be 
affected, while by the processes of nature we shall 
have been placed in different states of life. 
Science has demonstrated the mathematical truth 
of the absolute indestructibility of matter and 
force. Place certain chemicals on certain sub- 
stances and they change their appearance from 
solids to liquids, from liquids to gaseous sub- 
stances, from gases to ethers — here is where the 
present measurements of science, but not of 



242 Practical Occultism 

nature, cease — from ethers to the next finer state 
of state and thus continuously. Now all the while 
the essence, the soul of the object has remained 
associated with the variating form, manifesting 
itself alternately in different aspects of matter 
as different chemicals were used to change its 
form. Again, take certain chemical preparations, 
and the object returns from ethereal vibrations 
to the gases, from the gases to the fluids, from 
the fluids to the solids, completing the circle, and 
finally presenting the same essence and the same 
form that was previously subjected to chemicali- 
zation. On this idea is founded the physical basis 
Qf immortality. Of course we cannot conceive 
immortality without the possession by immortal 
consciousness of a body and a medium of sense 
relations corresponding in faculty and function 
to the faculty and function of the nervous system. 
By the experience of death, which is nothing else 
than the complete dechemicalization of the body 
into its causal elements, in other words, into those 
rarer states of matter adaptable to ethereal vibra- 
tions, but which require grosser evolution to 
manifest themselves on the physical earth plane — 
we have, by the persistence of matter and force, 
the necessary hypothesis of a body accompanying 
the departing spirit into the realms of the in- 
visible. We have seen how by chemical processes 



Philosophical Reflections 243 

the essence of objects are accompanied by vac- 
ating form — from the solid into the liquid, from 
the liquid into the gaseous, from the gaseous into 
the ethereal, from the ethereal into the next 
higher association. Similarly at death the useless 
gross body, subject to putrefaction, is discarded 
by the spirit for an ethereal counterpart of the 
body which is frequently seen hovering over newly 
made graves. As the spirit progresses, this 
ethereal body, by reason of its proximate connec- 
tion with the physical body, is also subject to dis- 
integration, leaving the spirit possessed finally of 
what is known in occult sciences as the astral 
body — the body of the subjective mind which 
evolves itself into the gross body at reincarnation. 
The astral body is visible in psychic experiences 
from those of the ordinary medium to the experi- 
ences of a Joan of Arc or the experiences cited in 
Biblical instances. 

In the preceding paragraphs we have observed 
the nature of objects and the objective world at 
large and found them to be, in so far as we know, 
simply states of consciousness resulting from the 
pressure of extraneous physical contact. What 
this physical contact is we do not know, but as 
all the processes of the universe tend toward ulti- 
mate unity, it is certain that in some way the ob- 
jective and subjective world blend into a unity — 



244 Practical Occultism 

even if that unity is the state of latency which 
obtains before the disturbance of the cosmic 
equilibrium, when all forms and forces, all causal 
laws and cosmic principles have become static. 
We have observed the existence of the medium, in 
our case the nervous system, by which conscious- 
ness and the external vibrations are related, and 
have seen that this medium, in every bit of its 
structure, is the composite of states of conscious- 
ness just as in the case of the nervous system each 
nerve particle represents a mental impression of 
racial experience in the ancestry, so that, could 
evolution undo its work, the disintegration of 
nerve particles would be accompanied by the re- 
appearance of past states of sense consciousness 
from the earliest sensations of earliest forms unto 
the present moment. We have seen how this 
medium and the solid form of the body melt into 
rarer states according to the changes which con- 
sciousness experiences at death. And occult 
teaching states that, as the soul progresses into 
the highest spheres and that as the states of con- 
sciousness become more and more advanced, more 
and more separated from the gross expression of 
sense desires and their indulgence, more and more 
separated, even, from the merely intellectual and 
psychic, when they become more and more 
spiritual until the acme of spiritual consciousness, 



Philosophical Reflections 245 

intelligence and bliss is realized, the body which 
encases the soul becomes more and more rare in 
the composition of its elements, rarer than ether, 
rarer than the finest conceivable or existing states 
of matter, until at length it fades entirely from 
existence, leaving the liberated soul formless, 
bodiless, leaving it as it was before the founda- 
tion of the universe — one with the Illimitable and 
the Imperishable which it eternally was, but which 
it failed to perceive because of veils of illusion. 

Not in the objective world is reality — not in 
the sphere of relative consciousness, with its sen- 
sations of the ordinary doings of life, the sensa- 
tions of its struggles for existence, of its weal or 
its woe, its sins or its virtues. 

It is not force which is reality, but that which 
manifests itself as force ; it is not matter which is 
reality, but that which manifests itself as matter; 
it is not sensation, life or consciousness which 
form reality, but that which expresses itself 
through them. It is the background, the white 
canvas, along which this picture show of the uni- 
verse is moving with its myriad expressions and 
personalities, which is reality, not the shifting 
phenomena on the canvas. 

All these variations of sense perception and the 
inferences therefrom should teach us that in their 
final bearings all objects are embodied in a divine 



246 Practical Occultism 

reality. For the essence of all things remains the 
same — the form through which it expresses itself 
alone changes. The essence is the eternal subject 
in all phenomena ; the form, the variating symbol 
which changes with the less or greater manifes- 
tation of the essence. What is this essence, 
eternal in its nature, which permeates all objects? 
In the terms of reason, Herbert Spencer has 
proved its utter unknowableness. In the terms of 
spiritual philosophy, it is the All-Spirit which 
manifests itself ever-present and in strange vari- 
ableness of beauty, no matter what form it as^ 
sumes. It accompanies the changes of form, and 
is the guiding Intelligence which develops the 
minutest atom as well as the mightiest central 
suns. All forms are its habitations, and in all 
modes of life it proves its equal supremacy by 
reason of the fact that it is. 

Though we had a million senses, there would 
still remain something unperceived, something of 
which we could not be conscious, something which 
would be perpetually subjective. Ultimately, 
therefore, even as with our own consciousness, ob- 
jects in their entirety are unanalyzable. Like our 
own states of consciousness, we may analyze the 
material states of objects, but, in reality, those 
very material states are our own mental states ris- 
ing in reaction to something we believe to be 



Philosophical Reflections 247 

external to ourselves. But as, in truth, our men- 
tal states are identical with our consciousness — 
being only modes of its expression — so, in like 
manner, all associations of matter and force are 
only material symbols of that special Unknowable 
Subjectivity in which our consciousness also 
blends and which religion perceives as "That" or 
Supreme Being, or Personalized God, and which 
science conceives as that Abstract Unknowable- 
ness. And in support of this position the famous 
statement of Spencer might be given, which em- 
bodies the idea that the energy which is mani- 
fested throughout the knowable universe and the 
external pressure which calls forth sensation is 
the same energy which wells up in us as conscious- 
ness, thus ascribing to the universal principle the 
same condition of being and intelligence, only in- 
finitely extended and purified, as is witnessed in 
the consciousness of Man. And herein lies the 
material, matter-of-fact background of such 
spiritual verities as "Thou are That," the dogma 
of omnipresence, the dogma of the intrinsic unity 
of all forms and all forces, all states of conscious- 
ness, and all phenomenal and objective reality in 
Something which transcends everything and yet 
is everything, Something which antedates, by 
eternity, the projection of universes, and Some- 
thing which outlives, by eternity, their dissolution, 



248 Practical Occultism 

Something which, for lack of better expression, 
we feebly call Spirit, Unconditioned, Absolute, 
World-Soul, and so forth. This is the Supreme, 
and, in fact, the only Truth; this is Silence and 
True Peace which underlies the immensities, the 
realization of which is the attainment of the 
Christ-Spirit, the liberation of the soul from the 
bondage of finalities and the relative, the falling 
from the eyes of the soul of all conceptions of the 
changeable universe and the consciousness only 
and absolute of the existence of Spirit. This is 
Nirvana. 



DEEPER MEANINGS 

The external is little compared with the inter- 
nal. It is the internal nature of things from 
which the external develops. It is the hidden 
source that is the true source. It is the invisible 
well-spring of truth that matters. It is the foun- 
tain of causes with which the soul should be con- 
cerned. It does not center attention on the inter- 
nal, however. It is only unconsciously concerned 
with seeking and realizing the internal. Man 
seeks the internal whenever he reaches forth to 
secure that which is external. As the soul grows 
in knowledge it realizes that the full meaning of 
anything visible is its invisible essence. That in- 
visible essence embodies itself in everything. 

Strange as it may seem, the real nature of the 
universe is invisible. The rose is potential in the 
seed. It is there in all its beauty and glory, but 
invisible. Yet were it not there it could not 
develop. The greatness, or the genius of a 
Napoleon is involved within a bit of protoplasm. 
It is hidden, invisible. Later it develops, assum- 
ing visible and tangible appearance. 

249 



250 Practical Occultism 

The things that concern man's deepest life are, 
all of them, invisible. Truth, goodness, beauty, 
adorableness, loveliness and all other noble quali- 
ties are, in truth, abstract. They are embodied 
and become perceptible when a man aspires to 
spiritual heights and, in the aspiration, realizes 
these things, Man takes the spiritual and makes 
it physical. For example, man becomes good; 
that is, he makes the ideal of goodness a con- 
creteness, a thing that one can sense. In its abso- 
lute condition; goodness is too high for mortal 
cognizance. Man could not appreciate ideals in 
and for themselves. Therefore, he worships 
J:hem in their personified state. The Christ-like 
character would remain ever ideal, ever abstract, 
did not a supreme soul like that of Christ give 
form and definiteness to it. 

In the realm of science and invention, truth first 
exists in the ideal. The ideal scientist gives years 
of thought to a subject. Finally the concentra- 
tion becomes so intense that it takes on a mental 
form ; that is, from out the innumerable thoughts 
there must arise an image corresponding to the 
nature of the subject reflected upon. This image 
is in the subconscious mind. There it is nurtured, 
until, at last, the conscious mind becomes recep- 
tive to its workings and realizes the image as a 
thing of beauty, or a thing of truth. Time and 



Deeper Meanings 251 

again we hear great men of science speak of their 
discoveries as if they were intuitions. They speak 
with the authority of prophets. It is a question 
whether all forms of discovery of truth are not 
intuitive and inspirational. Of course, it is un- 
doubtedly true that the greatest discoveries of 
truth are the discoveries of things related to the 
soul. Yet, in the last analysis, all things are 
related to the soul and every discovery, however 
named or however employed, is, in some form or 
other, serviceable to mankind, whether this ser- 
vice be negative or positive. If it is negative it 
comes into the experience of the race as what we 
call evil, but even evil is a necessary factor in the 
development of cosmic purposes. True dis- 
covery, of whatever description, is sacred and it 
is likewise revealed. 

The scientist is, in his special way, a priest. 
His utterances are sacred utterances, and his 
works benedictions to mankind as much as the 
voice and the work and the service of the anointed 
priest. Viewed from some points, life itself is 
religious. Every act, however characterless and 
however vague, has a moral meaning, developing 
a sense of good or a sense of evil, developing, 
also, the rewards of good and the punishments of 
evil. The truths that science discovers are all 
hidden truths. The devotion of the scientist to 



252 Practical Occultism 

his work is a religious devotion and from the 
fervor of his devotion the incense of humanitarian 
sympathy rises and from sympathy the powers to 
relieve distress and to bring education closer and 
closer to the dawning mind. Not a book-learned 
education, however, but an education that pre- 
sents itself in a better knowledge concerning the 
uses of life and a better and more sensitive and 
more artistic appreciation of the beauties and 
wonders of life. 

No scientist who deeply enters into his work 
can fail to pause in rapture and in wonder at the 
divinity his special science reveals, for, indeed, the 
limitations of any science exceed and ever exceed 
the increasing knowledge of the investigator and, 
in this respect, each special science is truly divine. 
The farther a man goes in any branch of science, 
the more subtle become the forms into which he 
investigates. The farther he goes, the more 
metaphysical does his science become, until 
physics and metaphysics brush elbows, finally 
merging into the unit of a single, all-comprehen- 
sive and all-pervading truth. 

There are many things in philosophy of which 
the mind is not yet informed. The mind is gradu- 
ally expanding, and as it expands to greater and 
greater proportions, its conceptions of truth be- 
come more extensive and true. The revelations 



Deeper Meanings 253 

it receives become more faithful and more truth- 
portraying. The more the mind investigates, the 
more it must investigate. The farther the quest 
of the mind, the farther its search after that 
quest. The dream of knowledge, like the dream 
of life itself, is endless. The concourse of all 
scientists could only give a theory, and a theory 
is always metaphysical. Only after much experi- 
mentation do theories become facts. The entire 
concensus of all scientists would merge into a 
question, into a hesitancy and into a doubt. The 
ultimate nature of the mind is dubious concerning 
the objects of knowledge. The infinite accuracy 
and the painstaking energy of the mind pushes a 
question so far that it becomes metaphysical, so 
that even demonstrable presentations of truth 
lose their influential signs and become hypotheti- 
cal. The nature of the mind is circular, and for 
this reason it always questions and always will 
question and never know in certain truth. The 
exploited facts concerning nature become myths 
when the minds of later scientists are set to work- 
ing. Even the law of gravitation has been put 
to the test. 

The passing strangeness of life, of knowledge, 
of truth, of reality, of illusion, of certainty, of 
uncertainty, of quest and lack of interest — all 
these are workings of something which is inde- 



254 Practical Occultism 

scribable, something behind nature, yet not un- 
natural, something above the mind and yet not 
distinct from the mind, something which is of the 
soul, co-existent with the soul, yet transcended by 
the soul. All manifestation is of the soul, be that 
manifestation what we call life, be it what we call 
death, be it what we call knowledge, be it what we 
call ignorance, be it what we call truth, be it what 
we call error. So far as reason and spiritual dis- 
crimination — all these things are but names of the 
different motions through which the soul passes 
on its onward superphysical and spiritual way, 
for the goal is spiritual, for the goal is beyond 
the senses and beyond thought, yea, beyond the 
utter and final description of man. 

The psychological definition of any state of 
consciousness is in ratio to the amount of intelli- 
gence involved, and as feeling is always co-exten- 
sive with consciousness, the highest state of the 
soul would be an endlessness of consciousness, 
both in variation and extension, a knowledge co- 
extensive with all possible objects of knowledge, 
including, therefore, the universe, and a corre- 
spondence in feeling which, being the composite of 
the infinite in life and knowledge, would also par- 
take of the supremacy of their character. That 
is, the sum-total of all definitions regarding feel- 
ing would be bliss, sheer expansion of feeling to 



Deeper Meanings 255 

the uttermost possibilities, that is to the infinite. 
Thus God is the synthesis of life, knowledge and 
bliss. Endless in life, knowledge and spiritual- 
ized, divine feeling, he is imminent in every fibre 
of life, every grain of knowledge, the essence of 
every object of knowledge, the manifestation of 
all things, the potential in the universe, — and also 
the basis and meaning of every feeling. 

That is the deeper meaning of Godhead, the 
significance embodied in the name God and in His 
existence. Therefore, whatever is real, true and 
substantial, positive and abiding in the nature of 
each individual soul is also real, true and eternal 
in the nature of God. He is all in all. To de- 
scribe Him as less would do away with our con- 
ception of Divinity, with our conception of the 
Supreme. He, embodying Himself, embodies all. 
He, Self-conscious, is the consciousness of all 
selves. He, knowing, is the knowledge and also 
the knowledge-discovering faculties and qualities 
of all beings. He is the super-sensuous God who 
is whatever is. 

This meaning is a worthy meaning of God. 
This God is beyond the molten images of clay to 
which we bow down. It is the Idol and the Ideal 
of the soul. It is the soul. Whatever import may 
be attached to the soul must also be attached to 
God. He is working through the eyes that see. 



256 Practical Occultism 

It is He that is working through the mouth that 
tastes, the heart that beats, the nose that smells, 
the organs that carry on the bodily functions. 
He is the entire body. Though men are unaware 
of these truths, they exist, just as the sun exists, 
though the darkness of night and the orientation 
of the sun renders its vision impossible to one-half 
the world. 

Whatever exists in nature exists in a partial 
sense. That is why nature is indescribable. What 
the whole of nature is composed of escapes our 
most patient and diligent analysis. Whatever is 
real in nature, therefore, escapes our just investi- 
gation. As nature is partially revealed, as there 
is the boundless, infinite potential still waiting to 
be shadowed forth in the cosmos as new worlds, 
new suns, new solar systems, as there is the end- 
less, still pregnant within the infinite womb of 
nature, so the Highest Truth, the Boundless 
Truth, the Unnameable Truth is, though its reve- 
lations must be partial. No one revelation truly 
contradicts another. The inner meaning blends 
with the inner meaning of all truth. That is the 
unifying point where discords merge into a har- 
monious whole. 

Supreme and unique, all-containing and won- 
drous, omni-present and omni-working is That 
Which men have termed Truth. Supreme, be- 



Deeper Meanings 257 

cause it is all in all. Whatever exists is, really, 
a concrete message of the super-physical truth. 
Whatever is, is a manifestation of truth. What- 
ever must be, will be a revelation in the physical, 
or in the mental, in the psychic, or in the spiritual, 
a revelation of the truth which presents itself in 
ways innumerable and in forms varied as the 
changes in the sky. 

It is the reality that man is seeking. "What is 
the real?" is his constant cry. "What is real?" 
he asks. Indeed, "What is real?" Nothing exists 
in the outward order which does not change, and 
change means non-persistence, and non-persistence 
means unreality. So within ourselves whence the 
query of truth finds origin, wherein the query of 
truth finds meaning; from within ourselves must 
come the answer, from within ourselves the defini- 
tion, from within ourselves, the light and the re- 
deeming grace to know. A sorry world and a 
gloomy spiritual outlook greets him whose query 
fails to find any solution. The seeker stops seek- 
ing and, giving up his life to the pursuits of the 
senses and to the follies of the passing states of 
things, sinks into the animal existence which seeks 
not, nor discovers, but is subject for its progress 
alone to the blind urge of instinct. 

Man is a god, but his divinity is one that must 
be asserted. The Olympian heights where he 



258 Practical Occultism 

asserts his ground must be the heights if the 
divinity he boasts shall remain in the picturesque 
glory of the empyrean. It is the deeper meaning 
which must be emphasized. The outer meaning is 
liable to misinterpretation and misconception. 
We interpret meanings to things that give forth 
no meanings and solemnly set ourselves to the 
task of naming things that are nameless, because 
they are non-persistent, because they are unreal. 

Life must mean something different to us than 
we are accustomed to understand it. It must have 
more extensive expression and fuller meaning. I,t 
is the deep meaning which we must seek. That 
deep meaning, once we are awakened to it, will 
make us mount the glorious staircase of life in 
a way triumphant, surmounting, overwhelming 
everything in the path by the sweet irresistibleness 
of our love and knowledge. The hidden springs 
of life are springs of purity, of divinity, of bliss 
and of exaltation of soul. When we get at the 
bottom-rock facts of life, when we have traced 
the source and fathomed the reasons of virtue and 
goodness, when we comprehend the general and 
spiritual meaning of goodness, of truth and of 
beauty, in and for themselves, then we shall have 
resurrected ourselves to sublimest heights of soul. 
Then, indeed, we shall have heard the chorus of 



Deeper Meanings 259 

the morning stars and listened to the Voice of 
the Silence, which is the Voice of God. 

Little mortals we, here in the vale of tears. 
Crying children in the dark, spoiled children, 
wishing for the things that we should mercilessly 
discard, ignorant of our ways and not understand- 
ing the serene, passionless calm and the strength 
of the calm that comes from control and purity, 
we wander through the great spaces of life and 
through its great lapses of time, characterlessly, 
aimlessly, meaninglessly, empty-handed, cheated, 
defeated, miserable, — and all this is illusion. 
Pain, and pain only can teach the understanding 
and the mysterious teachings of experience. 

Guide us amid the gloom. "O Shiva help the 
visionary ! O Shiva help the blind, for the night 
is darkest darkness and the moonlight is ob- 
scured." That is the prayer which the soul should 
send from its depths to the heights spiritual. 
Fathomless, profound beyond understanding, the 
everlasting soul alone is true. It alone is real. 
Thou art the soul. The soul alone is. This is 
the true, this is the immortal doctrine. This is the 
real, this the self-sufficient truth. This is the one 
fact beyond all facts, the supreme, the only, the 
all-important, the essential, the bliss and peace be- 
stowing consciousness. "Arise, thou that sleepest 



260 Practical Occultism 

the sleep of the spiritual death ! Arise, thou bliss- 
ful one and declare thy true nature I" 

The meaning of life is spiritual. There can be 
no other meaning. The spiritual interpretation 
alone explains. The spiritual interpretation alone 
satisfies the searching, longing soul. "Arise, thou 
effulgent soul!" The Vedas, the Bible, all scrip- 
tures, whatever their character, their age and 
description, tell the priceless story of the one and 
only truth, the truth that makes men free, the 
truth that they are the soul ; not the body, but the 
soul; not the mind, but the soul; not the psychic 
constitution, but the soul. It is the deathless, 
because it is the changeless entity. It is the real, 
because at all times the same. The soul is pristine 
in perfection, in glorious purity, in strength un- 
conquerable, in bliss all containing, in truth all- 
revealing. Thou art thy soul. Not that the soul 
is a part of man's nature; not that it is a quality 
of his being, but that it is the soul which alone is. 
Whatever a man is, he is the soul. That alone is 
real, because that is he. Yet even that "he" is, 
in the ultimate, phantasmical. The soul must die 
to egoism and in this death find its real "Ego" 
which is the Cosmic, Universal Ego of God. 

Stainless, pure and holy, sublime, unendingly 
matchless, incomparable, like the sky in extension 
and like the sun in radiance and glory, the self- 



Deeper Meanings 261 

revealed soul is one with the source of light and 
life, of truth and knowledge, of all that is, of 
all that is not, of the supreme and infinite source 
of life. Boundless and unnameable, transcending 
the understanding and life of creatures is that life 
beyond the senses, that life beyond the mind. 
Thought and matter are both aspects of the same 
condition, but there is something beyond matter, 
something infinitely beyond mind. That Some- 
thing is the Divinity, the divine nature residing in 
man, which is the truth of man, the life of man, 
the power of man, the glory of man, the peace of 
man, the benediction, the bliss, the ecstasies, the 
aspiration of man. 

Enduring throughout and beyond all time, ex- 
tending throughout and beyond all space, free, 
fearless and divine, — that is the nature of the 
soul. Let occur what may, let rivers form into 
seas and oceans, overflowing their shores, make 
havoc with the earth; let darkness cover the earth 
and let the earth roll into a gaseous nothingness, 
the soul lives on and on, nor can the destruction 
or the disintegration of everything physical affect 
it. Let the mind cease its query, let the arguments 
and the ratiocinations of mind cease, let the entire 
mental status pass into formlessness and expres- 
sionlessness of unawakened thought, still the soul 
shines, still lives the soul and nothing can hurt or 



262 Practical Occultism 

harm it. Fire cannot burn it, water cannot 
dampen it, nor can the sword cleave it. It is the 
imperishable; it is the indestructible. 

Awake ! Arise ! Declare, O soul, thy strength. 
For men are gods in embryo and the Promethean 
fire is rekindled by the breath of God. In the 
spaciousness of time and in the all-inclusiveness of 
space dwells the truth, the knowledge that we are 
immortal, not in the sense that we simply survive 
bodily disintegration. That were a poor immor- 
tality, indeed. What the soul must arrive at is 
deathlessness, the condition in which this relative 
life and this relative death are meaningless terms, 
where the soul possesses the consciousness of its 
'eternality and formlessness. Formless, it is be- 
yond space ; thoughtless, it is beyond time. It is 
beyond the combinations that form in space and 
the mind-waves that combine in time. It is seed- 
less of tendencies that cause the renewed expres- 
sion of physical life in which the soul is identified 
with body or, where the superstition is less crass, 
with mind. 

Salvation is his who redeems himself. No one 
can redeem another. From within ourselves must 
come the redeeming strength. From within our- 
selves must proceed the courageous strength that 
masters difficulties and lustily and successfully 



Deeper Meanings 263 

assails the ignorance that would crush the rising 
soul. Omnipotence is with the soul, the omnipo- 
tence of the divinity of the Supreme. It need 
stand in fear of nothing. It is powerful and can 
command all conditions, once it awakens to its 
sense of soul proportions, once it awakens to the 
consciousness that within itself is the life that 
causes suns to revolve in space with the propelling 
power of universal force, that within itself is the 
knowledge that causes men to know, and that 
keeps, in mysterious balance and hidden from the 
physical perception, the realm of mind. 

We are on the way. It may be long, but it is 
not endless. It may be tedious, but its tediousness 
is infinitely repaid with the great knowledge and 
the great realization that the soul wins in over- 
coming. 

It is time to rouse our slumbering conscious- 
ness. We are alive on but one side of our nature, 
the menta-physical side. There are other sides 
to the nature of man, but, above all, there is the 
spiritual side. Understanding and revealing this 
side, all other sides are revealed by him. "Glory 
to Man is the highest, for Man is the Master of 
things," sang a great seer-poet. But this Man 
and this Manhood is the statuesque man of 
spiritual proportions. It is the divine size of the 



264 Practical Occultism 

Inner Man, the Man of God, upon whom the 
Spirit of the Supreme has breathed the undying 
life and the undying light. 

We need only beckon, and truth shall serve us. 
We need only ask, and we shall receive. We need 
only knock, and the gates of the heavenly city 
of soul shall open. The beatific vision shall then 
unfold and the soul of man be thrilled through 
and through, thrilled with the ecstasy and the 
glorious perception that, from beginningless time 
and throughout the eternity of eternities, in and 
beyond the days and nights of Brahm, it has ever 
been one with the Heart of the Universe, one with 
the World-Soul, one with all things that make 
for endless knowledge, life and bliss. 



THE DIVINITY OF THE SOUL 

Transcendent heights are utterly beyond the 
ordinary human perspective and yet they are to 
be attained. Such is the paradox and destiny of 
life. The thought of Godhead must be super- 
seded by a consciousness of Godhead. The 
ability to soar into that empyrean of glory, to- 
wards which the intellect of man points, is di- 
vinity. Man's highest thought must become his 
highest feeling. Perception of a truth is greater 
than the mere thinking of it and thus the trans- 
lation of our idea of Godhead into the realm of 
our perfect consciousness of the divinity is what 
is necessary. It is only through the glorious haze 
of the centuries and through the ardent loyalty of 
a devoted discipleship that we understand incar- 
nations, but incarnations themselves must have 
sensed a deeper and far vaster divinity than that 
which presents itself to the disciple's mind in their 
manifestation of divinity. The consciousness of 
divinity possessed by the Buddha must have gone 
supremely beyond the consciousness of his disciple. 
A great man is ever infinitely greater in his own 

265 



266 Practical Occultism 

nature than can be appreciated. What the critic 
perceives and praises, the truly great know and 
feel. 

It is for that which the great of soul strive that 
must be our aim. Mere discipleship is not all that 
is demanded. What we are called upon by the 
very exigencies of our souls to do is to reach the 
same goal and attain unto the same height as the 
Sons of Men, whom we worship, have come to. 
Divinity manifests itself in strength, not in 
struggle, or if in struggle, a struggle which over- 
comes and which sweeps aside the clouds of 
spiritual and emotional unrest and allows the 
glory of the light divine to penetrate through and 
through the being of the soul. Divinity is the 
birthright and the ultimate heritage of the man 
who is sincere, be that sincerity great or small. 
What is wanted is a pre-eminent sincerity. Can 
we be sincere? If we are sincere then we may be 
assured that nothing can lastingly stand in our 
way. Mistakes we may make in trying to touch 
the throne of the eternal, but in that effort even 
our mistakes are divine. 

Divinity embodies itself and is made manifest 
in the purity of the saints who have sensed the 
immeasurable. Purity is the outward expression 
of the crystal depths of the soul of the Infinitely 
Pure One and of the Stainless One. It is the in- 



The Divinity of the Soul 267 

terpretation in the language of great thoughts and 
great emotions of what exists unlimited and un- 
thinkably sublime in that which is the eternally 
blessed and holy and which man worships in his 
highest mental and spiritual flights. Only the 
pure in heart attain unto the consciousness that 
is the divine. 

He does exist and He is the One and Single 
Soul in this universe and He appears as many 
and varied. He is the changeless essence in this 
dying world. Imperishable is He, for He has 
realized that which can neither decay nor grow 
long or be increased in any direction, for it dwells 
not in the forms of space nor does it rest in time. 
It knows only eternity and is eternity. Ever since 
the dawn of historic insight we find men praising 
the Transcendent. The heart of man is as correct 
in its sensing and longing for the infinite as it is 
correct and sincere in its longing and love for 
the beautiful. The mind and heart of man have 
placed that which is called God far beyond all 
common measurements. He is called the Perfec- 
tion of all relative perfections. He is the sun and 
the moon and the radiance of the stars. Greater 
than He there is nothing. This the heart of man 
has felt for scores and scores of centuries. This 
the mind of man has perceived through the inter- 
minable lengths of time during which both the 



268 Practical Occultism 

mind and heart of man have endeavored to know 
the mystic glories of the beyond. 

Divinity is the sum-total of all expression. 
Than it there never was nor can be anything. It 
is the source of all that is describable in terms of 
measure, although it is measureless. It is every- 
where and yet nowhere. It is indefinable and yet 
it is the most defined fact in life. It is the most 
perceptible while appearing as the most imper- 
ceptible fact. The mind of man has seen the be- 
yond in thought, in time, in form, and yet it 
doubts though knowing that all doubt is foolish, 
for the mind could not think the impossible. The 
very fact of the thought itself necessitates the pos- 
sibility of its expression. Ideas are if anything 
more actual than that we call facts. Ideas are 
the true facts. Therefore our thought concerning 
the infinite is also, and in an intense sense, our 
experience of the infinite. The educated mind 
realizes that what it perceives in the thought- 
world is as real if not more so than that which it 
perceives in the world of form. 

Only that which we can perceive is true and 
what we perceive through the medium of our in- 
telligence is also true, for intelligence is but one 
mode of perception, for it is but one form of ex- 
pression of the essence man names soul. The 
very thought of God is our surety that He is. 



The Divinity of the Soul 269 

The entire human heart cannot lie in its instincts. 
Could it, then the measurements of our science 
fail at perception just as much as our measure- 
ments of religious experience. We must take 
everything that the human heart has sensed and 
everything the human mind has thought and dis- 
cern the fact though it may be ever so burdened 
by the rubbish of credulence and superstition. In 
the long run, folk-lore becomes science, and 
science folk-lore, in turn. Science is only the de- 
scription of the infinite through our external and 
internal relations with it. The infinite is on all 
sides. It is whether it is perceived or unper- 
ceived. It can only be said that it is. Divinity 
is and we must be that very divinity by reason of 
being aware that it is and that it is the highest fact 
which we have been able to discover, the supreme 
fact explaining all other facts of our experience 
that stand otherwise in paradoxical relations. 

Great truths are never realized in small efforts 
and there is no great effort without a great aspira- 
tion. The truth of the divinity of all life and 
expression and of every individual soul, however 
inferior the expression of the divine, is the very 
highest truth of which we are conscious and all 
other truths can stand only in secondary meaning 
to it. No one can soar beyond the divine. At his 
highest he can only become one with it, for the 



270 Practical Occultism 

divineness of things is the last and greatest fact 
that can be mentioned regarding them. The work 
of man and his aspiration should be to perceive 
that divineness. Now that we know that divinity 
is in, throughout and beyond nature, our duty is 
to become conscious of it in the fullest sense of the 
word, but, as high as the thought of divinity is 
above all other thoughts, so must be the life of 
that man who aspires to the realization of that 
thought. We may condemn morals as we will 
and, if we choose, trace the idea of morality to 
the development of the tribal custom and to fear, 
but nevertheless all that is great in human achieve- 
ment is the result of the following out of the 
nobler instincts that are inseparably bound to our 
conception of morality. As light and darkness 
are but variations in our possibility at perceiving 
the same force which is expressed in light and 
darkness, so good and evil are but variations that 
our educated consciousness makes between the 
difference in degrees of the same mental and emo- 
tional unit-force that is thus dually expressed. 
Still we are bound to admit that light so far as 
our sense perception reaches, is more pleasing and 
more useful than the darkness and that the quality 
of goodness is a shining and spiritual quality as 
compared with the darkness and death of evil. 
We may condemn all morals, but in spite of our 



The Divinity of the Soul 271 

condemnation we know that it is only through a 
highly specialized moral consciousness that we can 
ever sanely and legitimately hope to understand 
in terms of emotion what we call divinity in the 
terms of thought. Therefore we must pay rigid 
attention to our moral discernment and follow it 
implicitly. 

The very idea of morality is conterminous with 
our idea of the approach to the divine. AH im- 
morality is the outgrowth of, and is performed in, 
selfishness, and selfishness means separateness, 
and there can be no separateness in divinity, for 
divinity is universal. It is a whole and has no 
parts. It is the climax of unselfishness or of self- 
lessness. The greatest selflessness is the means 
through which the transfiguration of Self occurs, 
and the transfiguration of the selfish into the un- 
selfish self is the means through which we have 
become divine. Those Children of Bliss whom 
man has called divine have represented the highest 
in selflessness and through their very selflessness 
they have accomplished more and affected to an 
infinitely greater extent the heart of man than the 
greatest secular heroes whose efforts manifest the 
greatest forms of selfishness. The really divine 
person works for the sake of the work and thus 
works for the good of himself in working better 
for the good of all. 



272 Practical Occultism 

Ideas are not perceptible in themselves except 
to a very great seer who knows that ideas are real 
and that ideas rule. In the ordinary sense an 
idea is visible only through its emotional manifes- 
tation. When an idea arouses the will and the 
will arouses the emotional faculties then only may 
the idea be spoken of as real. This great idea of 
divinity that man has been entertaining and wor- 
shipping from immemorial time is perceivable in 
its essence and truth only by such who have passed 
into the border of the strenuous desire where the 
idea is visualized in the emotional experience, and 
such persons were the saints and prophets of re- 
ligion. Isaiah and Jeremiah and Christ and 
Buddha perceived what men believed. They real- 
ized the things concerning which man has been 
speculating in innumerable philosophies. That 
realization must be ours. Not until it is ours can 
we speak of divinity or know that we are divine. 
With open hearts and open minds, with sincerity 
of attitude and purity of intention, let us advance 
with speed and strength on that path which shall 
lead us to the rich comprehension and actual per- 
ception of that which we have sensed as the di- 
vine. 

Only the great in soul realize the great in the 
aspiration of the human heart. The portals of 
the mind are thrown open and the waters of reve- 



The Divinity of the Soul 273 

lation are surging through the opened channel 
and overwhelm in bliss and knowledge the soul 
of the aspirant. A man is great only as his 
thought is great. He is great in heart only as he 
attempts to realize what he thinks. We have 
been talking of the divine and speculating for cen- 
turies on the nature of the divine, but we have 
given least attention to the necessity of realiza- 
tion. What are words, what tones of commen- 
taries on the divine when the divinity forever re- 
mains hidden? Shall this be so always? Shall 
we never know? These same questions were 
asked by every soul that hoped to reach a greater 
level of spiritual experience. Men have been 
searching for the divine when they knew that all 
search for the divine in any world, other than 
that of their own soul, was futile. If there is 
divinity in the universe then we are all divine and 
not in the pretty frame of a beautiful metaphor, 
but in the vastness of an all-absorbing truth. For 
this reason we exist that the divine in us can be 
made manifest. We have discovered the exist- 
ence of the divine, now is the time to attain it. 
Our argosies of soul have set sail on the great sea 
of spiritual experience and we must treasure the 
truths that we observe along the great passage- 
ways of life. We cannot repeat too frequently: 
"There is no divinity other than that which man 



274 Practical Occultism 

has sensed and what man has dimly sensed that 
he can definitely realize. We are that divine. We 
are that divinity. Let us break the barriers of 
selfishness and attain to that which is the second- 
less, the pure, the strong, the holy and the true." 
Our educated emotions carry us whither our 
thoughts can never go. We might think endlessly 
of Mozart's symphonies, but we would never 
understand. Only the music itself can make us 
feel. In a sense, similar only, the feeling of di- 
vinity can make us know the divine. We may 
speculate and speculate and never get anywhere, 
but aspiration and devotion to our chosen ideal 
will give sight to our spiritual blindness and make 
us hear, where at present we are deaf. The mag- 
nificence of the sun never dawns on us save as 
we see it in all its splendor. The ocean is only a 
name until we see it and can listen to its thunder- 
ing roar. All great things are vague until they 
are seen, and the greatness of the soul will never 
dawn on us until we realize that we are the soul. 
Now the glories of the forms of God are known 
to us. The time shall come when we shall see 
Him as He is. The divinity of our soul is called 
by all possible variety of name. It is called the 
nameless and the formless, the unknowable and 
the indescribable. So it is with the man born 
blind. He can never sense the splendors of the 



The Divinity of the Soul 275 

firmament. To him they are forever unknowable, 
forever undescribable and forever formless. But 
can his sight be given to him he shall see that 
which he now fails to see and he shall experience 
the joy of his sight. When that which is now 
formless assumes form in thought or form in the 
soul then will the soul experience the Vision 
Beatific, and whereas it previously thought about 
the divine and aspired to it, it now is divine. 

Let us make our thought of the divinity of life 
the more intense by calling it frequently to our 
concentrated mind. That will strengthen our de- 
sire to manifest the divine. That will make us 
anxious in our struggle to overcome and make us 
also successful. We will no longer stand idle in 
the world of aspiration, but seek evermore to gain 
more and more unselfishness, more and more 
purity, more and more strength which are the 
qualities which when perfected make a man con- 
scious of who he is. We who know all things do 
not know ourselves, and yet that is the first word 
of wisdom for him who would be wise. We may 
know nature and have measured her tracings, but 
what doth it profit us if we have not known our- 
selves. Only the great see the necessity of effort. 
The small are carried by the whirlpool of their 
small hopes into the vortex of the constantly 
small, but the great desire to close their ears to 



276 Practical Occultism 

the sounds of the worldly crash and shut their 
eyes to the petty struggle of the petty. The 
worm wots not of the mountain, nor the mountain 
of the sun, nor the sun of the vastness of space, 
but in the march of the One through the many 
and of the ultimate realization of the One in the 
many and as the One even the worm must be- 
come the God and the blade of grass manifest the 
divine. Such is the law of divinity that everything 
manifest the divine from the highest god to the 
lowest sinner. There is neither the high place 
nor the low place to the great, for both the high 
and the low are their foot-stool and they sit 
mighty and glorious in the unspeakable and un- 
thinkable peace of that which is ever God. 

And the voices of the gods thunder throughout 
the universe: "Call yourself by no name other 
than God. Tell yourself day and night that you 
are none other than the God in Whom you believe 
and to Whom you have offered sacrifice and be- 
fore Whom you have prostrated yourself, for the 
God of gods is the God of your own imperishable, 
changeless and deathless soul. Live the God and 
be the God in Whom you believe. Then you 
shall become one with Him. In fact you are He 
and He is you. Know this and be free forever." 
Aspiration, devotion, unswerving loyalty to and 
love for the Highest will render us conscious of 



The Divinity of the Soul 277 

and make us that Highest. When we have 
touched the Highest in our individual souls we 
shall have realized and we shall be the divinity of 
which we dream. 

"Oh ! Man the Infinite Dreamer dreaming 
finite dreams." 



THE HIGHEST IDEAL 

The greatest of all ideals is the ideal of self- 
expression. The inner, cosmic essence of this 
highest of ideals has given birth to the entire 
universe with its endless variety and its trans- 
forming processes, processes which have their be- 
ginnings in the workings of blind forces and 
blinder atoms and culminate into the divinest of 
creatures, the incarnation of the very Supreme. 

The restlessness and uncertainty, the dissatis- 
faction we find everywhere in nature, the conflict- 
ing circumstances of natural forces, and the differ- 
ences we find in the animal and human life, are 
not a vicious discontent with their fate and experi- 
ence, as much as the instinctive attitude in nature 
toward barriers which inhibit growth, larger at- 
tainment, greater perfection, increase of self- 
expression. In fact, we might sum up the entire 
non-moral and immoral conditions in the cate- 
gory of the barriers to self-expression, for every 
sin is the symbol of a prevention toward more 
lofty conduct, prevention which may rise through 

278 



The Highest Ideal 279 

inheritance from ancestors or through an environ- 
ment which hinders the soul by cramping its pos- 
sibilities for achievement. 

Self-expression has a dual significance, one join- 
ing itself to the temporary dispositions of the 
lower self which comes into being at every rein- 
carnation, and the other joining itself to the 
higher, divine interests of the Eternal Self of 
which the lower self is the finite manifestation. 

The secondary significance, the significance of 
the expression of the lower self, is witnessed in the 
practice of such moral obligations as strengthen 
the soul in its higher effort, as permit it to become 
unselfish, selfless in order that the manifestation 
and the glory of the Higher Self may shine forth. 
We witness this secondary significance associated 
with great moral effort and achievement in the 
lives of the very greatest of the sages. They have 
climbed the great ladder of spiritual progress 
from its lowest to its highest rung. They have 
frequently stumbled into moral misgivings and 
errors throughout the many incarnations, but each 
life renewed was another opportunity, another 
success, and a higher attainment. The finale of 
such effort resulted in their reaching the goal, 
manifesting the Divine within so that they became 
one with Spirit, became great religious reformers, 



280 Practical Occultism 

rehabilitating the old belief or bringing new reve- 
lation from the eternal source of all Truth — the 
Inner, Higher, Divine Self. 

Too many mistake the ideal of self-expression. 
They understand it to be the realization of their 
passing, day-dream of power and fame, of wealth 
and lust. But that is not true self-expression 
which harms another, and the realization of pas- 
sions in any form is not self-expression but self- 
repression. For all that is done by the individual 
is done to himself. The one who is harmed by 
the satisfaction of another's base desire is injured 
indeed, but he who is the actuator of harm doubly 
suffers, for the harm in its journey from the soul 
has gained force, and this added force rebounds 
with tremendous power upon him who has set it 
loose. 

That which is truly unselfish is truly self-expres- 
sive. And that which is essentially unselfish is 
expressive of the higher evolutionary type, the 
highest type of the high expression to which 
nature has attained in the many ages of the past. 
What is more in the order of evolution, more, 
also, in keeping with what is unselfish than the 
mother-love which readily imperils life for off- 
spring. We find such conduct even in the lowest 
of the animal species, but in man it reaches its 
greatest climax, for in many cases there is not 



The Highest Ideal 281 

the slightest instinctive selfishness. We can easily 
understand how mothers suffer death for their 
children. That is instinctive. Even mothers are 
indirectly selfish. But when we find a hero 
jeopardizing himself to certain death for the life 
of a stranger, we are struck with a more convinc- 
ing unselfishness. The form of this unselfishness 
rises higher and higher until it affects the religious 
element in human nature. For religion men, 
women, even children, willingly suffer torture, 
exile, martyrdom. The highest type of this spirit 
is witnessed in the great renunciation of the Mas- 
ters who forsake all earthly possessions to teach 
the Word. 

Thus what is apparent self-repression, self- 
jeopardizing, self-annihilation is the very essence 
of self-expression, for it is the rooting of the 
selfish self which craves and riots in its craving. 
Thus, likewise, what is apparent self-expression in 
the furtherance of selfish ambition unmindful of 
suffering to others is self-limitation, self-destruc- 
tion. One phase of these circumstances has given 
us the signers of Independence, the social, political 
and other reformers, introducers of the racially 
more self-expressive; it has given us the moral 
and religious heroes of the world, its greatest 
spiritual geniuses. The other phase has given us 
Alexanders, Caesars, Napoleons, wielders of 



282 Practical Occultism 

great power and the spillers of much blood; it 
has given us the scheming, self-interested man of 
politics, the unscrupulous men of high finance 
whose single word stretches the price of living al- 
most beyond the purchase of the millions of the 
poor. 

Yet the efforts of the lower expressive have 
been of benefit in so far as they have contrasted 
themselves with the efforts of the nobler and the 
higher. The shade of difference has made many 
aware and ashamed of the smallness and the sel- 
fishness of their lives and brought them to an 
understanding of what is self-expressive. Accord- 
ingly, we find men who have attained to question- 
ably-acquired wealth, giving and giving millions to 
charitable organizations which have been formu- 
lated for the protection of the misery, the squalor 
and poverty which are caused through the unsal- 
able, money-fevered policies of these very men in 
the day of their earlier and more selfish manhood. 

The day of modern enlightenment is making 
us understand the true brotherhood of all life, and 
this ideal of brotherhood thoroughly realized will 
necessitate the weeding of selfish instincts in the 
interests of the larger number. All life, no mat- 
ter how humble in expression, is bound by indis- 
soluble ties. All life is one. The entire human 



The Highest Ideal 283 

species is but one great individual, and it contrasts 
itself with all other species as something separate 
and distinct. Yet it is not so. The human 
species, especially in a physical sense, is intimately 
related to the higher vertebrated types, to the 
mammals. It partakes of the physical necessities 
and modes of organic function and development. 
It is related to it by all the senses and the instinc- 
tive emotions. In turn, the higher animal types 
are indiscernibly affiliated with lower species, and 
these, again, with lower and lower until we come 
to the lowest manifestation of life potentially lat- 
ent in chemical atoms. 

This understanding of the unity and ultimate 
identity of all life will lead to a desire for the 
attainment of the ideal of the truly self-expressive 
which is the truly unselfish. When we come to 
recognize the point where our life blends with 
ancestral types which are indistinguishable from 
the animal species we will exclaim with Tennyson 
in his praise of that preacher of the Unity of Life : 

u Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were 

here again; 
He who in his catholic wholeness used to call the 

birds and flowers 
Brothers, sisters — and the beasts whose pains are 

hardly less than ours." 



284 Practical Occultism 

And the great founder of the Franciscan recluses 
is but one of the myriad of religious men and 
women who recognize the same sacredness in all 
life and who, therefore, are unselfish toward all 
life. ■ Instances are cited in history where men 
have welcomed death rather than slay. When 
one has reached that stage of spiritual unfold- 
ment where they follow the precept of the 
Buddha : 

"Kill not — for Pity's sake — and lest you slay 
The meanest thing upon its upward way." 

they have attained to much, for the first percep- 
tion of the Spirit is through the vision of the 
unity of identity and the brotherhood of all life. 
One of the immediate blessings which follows 
this larger attitude is that it will be recognized 
by the very animals themselves. They will recog- 
nize the kindnesses and the harmlessness of your 
nature and will never fear or disturb you. There 
are any number of observations where religious 
sages who make the jungles their abode are un- 
harmed even in the closest proximity to the blood- 
thirsty tiger, and there are bronzes in which the 
artist features the ascetic in meditation with a 
tiger standing close by. In the Roman Catholic 
Church we find pictures of St. Francis surrounded 
by the beasts of the forest, his frequent abiding- 



The Highest Ideal 285 

place. We have spoken of the influence of auras 
and how we are affected by their atmosphere. 
Animals who are largely intuitive frequently show 
a higher sensitiveness to auras than we. They 
sense the wrong mental attitude of fear or that of 
enmity and act accordingly. When the spirit in 
man is developed he radiates an atmosphere of 
kindness and thus has dominion over all animals, 
as the Spirit from the beginning had ordained. 
The higher teaching admonishes us to see our 
little brothers in all creatures, brothers younger in 
the spirit who are destined to evolve into the 
human expression after the karma of the animal 
nature has been worked out. We are admonished 
to treat them with great consideration, for then 
they will part ways with their more ferocious, 
brutal emotions which bind them in the animal 
world. In return they will respond with love and 
kindness, for they crave kindness and thoughtful- 
ness as much as we. 

In this manner we are born to higher expres- 
sion, true self-expression. It is through these 
ideas and the adherence to them that we broaden 
our views and our emotions. We become unat- 
tached to our separate, personal interests, for our 
interests have grown from the limited into the 
more inclusive, and we take the whole of nature 
in our heart and in our thought. We will not 



286 Practical Occultism 

treat the lower creatures with the abuse of the 
cabman to his horse. We will grow to regard 
them with a same fondness with which we regard 
the domesticated pet. 

We witness, however, the direct opposite of 
these things in our daily experience. The ma- 
jority of men governed by passion and desire, by 
interest and self, are not unselfish. The increased 
pressure of social and economic troubles have in- 
tensified the scramble after the dollar and the 
few golden balls upon which the world sets value. 
The hurry and skurry of our modern life and the 
nervousness and mental excitement all about us 
.render the most of us too keyed-up to the per- 
sonal and the selfish. They are bound to make 
us self-concentrated, but it is only by breaking 
these conditions that we can become unselfish and 
give birth to larger self-expression. We must 
ignore the too strenuous material tie which fetters 
the soul, else "we pay too high a price for the 
whistle" of material comfort. We sacrifice the 
higher and the permanent for the sake of the 
lower and impermanent. We cut short the ex- 
pression of soul for the expression of bodily 
comforts and luxuries. Let the spiritual under- 
standing of the value of life, of the sanative and 
self-preservative value of the understanding sink 



The Highest Ideal 287 

into the soul and it will immediately renounce all 
holds on the evanescent and insignificant. 

The Higher Call and Response 

All men recognize in their inner nature a some- 
thing which calls out of the depth for the expres- 
sion of the best within. This call ranges from the 
socially redeeming, the simple humanitarian, the 
artistic, the inventive, the scientific, the literary, 
the philosophical, or, best of all, the spiritual. 
All men find themselves hearing one or another 
modulation of this call. It commences its utter- 
ance in the early youth and manhood and gives 
intuition of the vocation to be followed and the 
necessary ambition and talents. This is the call 
which, if heeded, leads to the perfect expression 
of self; which, if unheeded, curses its ignorer with 
the woes of life. This call, in a degree of intelli- 
gence and spiritual evolution, is the manifestation 
of the highest evolution of our personal nature 
and, followed, places the feet of the reincarnating 
soul upon the proper path. It is the call of most 
self-expressive. Those who adapt themselves to 
this call in every life-journey are given greater 
opportunities and higher talents until at length 
the highest vision is presented to the worthy soul 



288 Practical Occultism 

and it becomes possessed of the highest knowl- 
edge. 

No matter how humble may be the call of the 
soul, it is the most worthy, and if a man or a 
woman responds to the call, he is giving to the 
world the very best that is in him. Nature has 
made the following of the call an easy task be- 
cause she has added the pleasure of the respective 
work together with the pure joy of achievement. 
You will find men of minor intelligence, as an ex- 
ample the average artisan, taking the greatest 
pleasure in his work. He receives as much joy 
and pride from following his trade and takes as 
active an interest in it as does the man of high 
finance or the holder of an eminent political office, 
indeed, he gets more of life and self-expression 
from it than does the more favored. 

Self-expression invariably implies a vocation of 
some kind, because self-expression embraces the 
development of the mental, and that is brought 
about by allowing the mind to take an active in- 
terest in that to which it is inclined. In keeping 
with this thought, therefore, parents are coun- 
selled to permit their children every opportunity 
for the expression of their mental, inventive or 
practical genius. The young boy toying with his 
self-constructed engine is not concerned with any- 
thing whimsical. It is the intuition of the child 



The Highest Ideal 289 

working out in a crude fashion the possibilities of 
great talents. You will find that the child has its 
greatest happiness in following its intuitions, 
verifying the fact that nature inseparably blends 
self-expression with joy. 

We cannot criticise any so long as they are 
uttering the highest symbol of their possibilities. 
Their talents may be of a lower order than the 
high intellectual, but because of their response to 
the higher call their souls are possessed of the 
highest beauty of the soul, the beauty of self- 
expression. 

Such who are fevered with the ideal of self- 
expression have the greatest freedom. No bar- 
riers are too constraining, no difficulties too great 
to overcome for him who wills that nothing but 
the best within shall shine forth. The soul has 
the quality to tone down all unevenness which 
hinders development as much as the river forces 
its way through the rockiest mountains by the 
processes of erosion. The soul partakes of the 
omnipotence and freedom of Spirit as it allies 
itself with its higher self, and all obstacles fall 
before its path like dense shadows before bril- 
liant light. 



290 Practical Occultism 

Racial Disturbances and Self -Expression 

Passing from the individual to the race at large, 
we find how mankind as such has successfully 
striven against seemingly insurmountable barriers 
in the great effort of self-expression. It has con- 
quered natural forces; it has fertilized deserts; 
it has peopled and civilized the wildest, weirdest 
and most distant regions of the earth. It has 
mastered those ancestral emotions which draw 
the line of stringent distinction between the ani- 
mal and human; it has developed the mental, 
psychic and spiritual elements in its gradual mas- 
tering of self. 

It has also shed rivers of blood, perpetrated 
most dire emotional cataclysms, upset much of 
what has been attained in the effort to realize a 
new ideal; it has alternations of unspeakable ex- 
tremes; it has been subjected to frenzies, melan- 
cholies and exaltations during the course of its 
progress. 

But we are not to misconstrue these happen- 
ings as a blot in the development. Dissatisfac- 
tion, revolution, redistribution, bloody reforms, 
are all in order at definite periods, and we dis- 
cover that from the seething mass of insurrection 
and mental and emotional uncertainties, from the 
strife and the conflict, from the temperamental 



The Highest Ideal 291 

tangents of racial psychological experience, a new 
Mankind has been born, even as the child is born 
through maternal suffering. Nature has as one 
of its principles, the oft-quoted proverb, "The 
end justifies the means." An earthquake is set 
in motion that poisonous and cramped internal 
conditions may be adjusted and the face of the 
earth beautified. Stellar clashes and eccentricities 
of orbits are all required in the great problem of 
cosmic evolution. Similarly where humanity is 
concerned, there is frequent need for great soci- 
ological, religious, political and economic up- 
heavals, arousing the depth of human emotion, 
awakening the depth of human intelligence that a 
newer, freer, more racially expressive circum- 
stance may be introduced in the life of the race. 
The French Revolution, the American Revolu- 
tion, the great wars of history, the great clashes 
involving religion and industry are all emotional 
incidents where we see humanity at its best. For 
then the lethargy and stagnation which often as- 
sc f r itself is removed for the expression of higher 
racial qualities and achievements. 

Even as the individual rises and falls in the 
great battle of life, even as he must overcome 
conflicting conditions, even as he must surmount 
impassable paths of self-unfoldment, so the race 
equally undergoes trying states, but it is only as it 



292 Practical Occultism 

triumphs over barriers that higher civilization is 
attained. 

Socialism and kindred political and industrial 
disturbances which history records are the utter- 
ances of great racial dissatisfaction with the ex- 
isting order of things, an assertiveness of newer 
ideals which struggle to express themselves 
against the tyrannous rule of long-standing ideals 
which have outgrown their need and are pestifer- 
ous in their present existence. To battle with the 
innovating ideal is a futile task. We may rant 
and rant against the feasibility of the new ideal, 
we may persecute its champions, we may heap 
ridicule on its adherents, but if it possesses the 
inherent evolutionary virtue, it triumphs in spite 
of the most combined opposition. A revolution 
is the outward expression of inner racial dissatis- 
faction. Of course, it introduces terrible condi- 
tions, but all achievement is founded on suffering 
and woe. It is only by the death of the old that 
the new is born. It is only by the giving-up of the 
long-used that the new serviceable idea can be of 
racial assistance. It is only by the repression of 
the lower that the higher can come into expres- 
sion. 

The spectator of human affairs, therefore, im- 
personally observes the trend of all things with 
equal complacency, knowing that all, in the ulti- 



The Highest Ideal 293 

mate, is for the welfare and development of the 
race. He does not grow excited at the sight of 
bloodshed and bitter dissensions, for he under- 
stands that these will finally lead to higher things. 

The Higher Self 

But as the goal of all human effort is the 
spiritualization of the race through the growth 
and maintenance of larger racial ideals, so all in- 
dividual effort, after having passed through the 
lower stages of self-expression, will concern itself 
with the expression of the higher self. All great 
religious teachers, all renouncers of the worldly 
and temporal have reached their lofty position 
through aeons of achievement in lower ideals. 
They have had possessions and wealth, power and 
fame, luxury and the numerous deceits of the 
flesh, and have grown to an understanding of the 
folly and the vapidness, of the superficiality and 
misery of these things, and have learned to avoid 
them. In lives past, they have been kings, owners 
of great possessions, enjoyers of emotional char- 
acteristics, but having passed through these stages 
and found that "All is vanity and vexation of 
spirit," they have accordingly adjusted their lives 
and mental attitude. 

They have made the Great Renunciation which, 



294 Practical Occultism 

to the worldly, is presumptuously impractical, but 
to the spiritually unfolded, the very ecstasy of joy 
and the only conduct worth while, worthy of the 
dignity of man and the dignity of spirit. 

Renunciation of all that to which the minor self 
clings is the primary step in the divine expression 
of the Eternal Self. All religious sages have 
practised this renunciation at some stage of their 
development, and, in the last stages of earth life 
have made renunciation their constant practice. 
All leaders of religious reformation have been 
such renunciators, and their followers have fol- 
lowed in their footsteps. But all these sages have 
once been in the low position which characterizes 
the majority. They also have once been children 
in the spirit, uninstructed and ignorant of the 
greater way and the larger truth. They have 
served in the menial position, climbing therefrom 
to larger duties and higher responsibilities until 
their efforts were crowned with attainment and 
high self-expression.. For this reason they fully 
sympathize with the weak, undisciplined charac- 
ter who raises the heart in veneration and affec- 
tion to them. They surround those who call, and 
satisfy the spiritual needs of such who ask. They 
are present when there is need, and we can depend 
on them, for they are messengers of the Spirit, 



The Highest Ideal 295 

and their duty and joy is spiritual assistance to 
others. 

In this lies the true spirit of self-expression and 
the attainment of that high ideal. Service is the 
secret; service, the duty; service, the bliss; ser- 
vice, also, the reward. Self-repression, self-for- 
getfulness, are the vows which the soul takes when 
it desires to give the best within. And in this ser- 
vice and expression, in the recognition of the 
unity of all life, and the brotherhood of all beings 
and creatures, of all things, is the partially mani- 
fested love which permeates every atom of the 
universe and every atom of life. The soul merges 
itself in love, in the love that is Spirit, in the love 
that is God. It is love that is the ultimum of 
all self-expression, because it is the expression of 
the Divine Self whose essence is love and light. 
The outer symbols of this love are human sym- 
pathies, charity and service. 

Before the soul commences the greatest vision 
of which it can possibly perceive; in the silence 
and the calm of the soul which has reached the 
goal, there passes the vision of perfect love, and 
in that love the soul finds the Beloved, which, in 
its many lives, it had idealized and adored in 
the human face and in natural beauty. It sees 
its Beloved in all things, — in the depths of the 



296 Practical Occultism 

heart and as the essence of Self. Herein lies the 
vision : 

Love throbs at the heart of the atom, drawing 
like elements to their own; love throbs in the 
great combinations of atoms, such as the moon 
and the stars and the mighty suns, causing them 
to respond in wondrous sensitiveness and exact- 
ness to those natural forces which are the outward 
symbol of the loves and affinities of the stellar 
souls, of the divine beings whose bodies are the 
worlds in space. Love throbs at the center of 
the earth in its continued formation, and that love 
manifests in the conception and birth of all living 
"beings who inhabit the face of the earth. Love 
throbs in the animal world from the instinctive, 
momentary passion to the life-long mating of the 
higher type, as the lion; love enfolds all the earth 
and brings forth the radiant beauties and the 
utilities of earth life. 

The soul can see naught but manifested love. 
It passes from the world of sense to the higher 
emotional world. There it finds the beginnings 
of self-sacrifice; it sees the commencings of self- 
repression in the interests of the many; it sees the 
noble efforts of the heroines and heroes of all ages 
whose will has advanced the world into higher 
proportions, and in all things recognizes the In- 



The Highest Ideal 297 

finite Love of which all these are the higher but 
evanescent phases. 

Deeper and deeper rises the vision of the soul. 
From being without, it now pictures the very 
within of the soul itself. There love is reflected 
and the soul sees its love for humanity, its self- 
expression mirrored in translucent beauty. The 
last glimmering of the vision passes beyond the 
horizon of thought and sense feeling, passes into 
the Great Beyond where the Unconditioned God 
resides in the majesty of pure divinity. The soul 
loses sight of all external vision, and alone sees 
the Beloved who is the fervor and essence of love. 
And in its soul it sees that Infinite Love as its 
Self. 

Such is the goal of the highest Self-expression, 
such the achievement of what is most desirable, 
most worthy, most marvelous, most divine. 



CONCERNING THE ETERNAL OMNI- 
PRESENT SELF 

There is but One Infinite Reality in this fleet- 
ing alternation of life and death; there is but One 
Imperishable Substrate in this perpetual evolu- 
tion and disintegration of countless solar systems ; 
there is but One Eternal Truth in the immensities 
of the universe. It is the Omnipresent Spirit. 

What is meant by Omnipresence? It is meant 
that should you travel even with the inconceiv- 
able rapidity of light and thought, throughout 
endless time in the shoreless ocean of space, at 
every point of your unthinkable journey there 
would be u He at whose command the wind blows, 
fire burns, flowers bloom, stars shine, and Death 
stalks upon the earth." He is the soul of your 
soul and my soul, and the soul of all Existence. 
"He is infinitely larger than the largest, and in- 
finitely smaller than the smallest. He pervades 
the infinite space and also resides in the minutest 
atom of atom. He also dwells in the innermost 
sanctuary of the soul of every man and woman. 
Whosoever realizes that Divine Omnipresence, 

298 



Concerning the Eternal Omnipresent Self 299 

whose image the individual soul is, unto him 
comes eternal peace and perpetual bliss, unto none 
else, unto none else." Stretch forth your hand 
He is there; gaze into the immeasurable expanse 
of the heavens, He, the Lord, is present. "That 
immortal Brahman — Spirit — is before, that Brah- 
man is behind, that Brahman is right and left. 
It has gone forth below and above. Brahman 
alone is all this. It is the best." Such has been 
the teachings of our orthodox churches; the teach- 
ings of the sages of the East and West. Like 
many other great truths it has merely passed the 
surface of the life of man immersed in the 
pleasures of the senses and occupied with the per- 
ishable and the transitory. Should it visit the 
depths of the heart it would instantly transform 
the human into the Divine. Omnipresence im- 
plies omniscience, for as He is everywhere, He 
knows All. Omnipresence implies even a still 
greater truth, extremely difficult to comprehend, 
and a truth which has caused more theorizing and 
misunderstanding than any other. It is this: 
Omnipresence means omniexistence, for if the 
Lord is everywhere there can be no room for any 
other existence. Should anything have any ex- 
istence besides Him, it would immediately render 
Him finite. The Lord is everything the intellect 
can know or imagine. He is the Knowable and 



300 



Practical Occultism 



the Unknowable; He is both Being and Non- 
Being; He is the Universe and what is not this 
Universe; He is both Light and Darkness, and 
as He Himself says in the Scriptures, He is both 
Good and Evil. For he is the poison of the 
snake, the viciousness of vicious things, the de- 
stroying power in nature as well as its vivifying 
principle. Realizing this, many, nations have 
adopted in their mythology a god personifying 
that aspect of Spirit, as well as a god from whom 
all blessings flow. The Lord is all the various 
permutations of Being; He is our body, mind 
and soul; He is the matter, intelligence and soul 
• of this universe. He is Spirit. These thoughts 
of course do away with our little personal, selfish 
self. But for it is substituted an Infinite Self. 
This is the dizzy acme of philosophical specula- 
tion and necessitates the deepest concentration. 
Sometime or other, either in this or a future exist- 
ence, these things will have to be realized, and 
the sooner the better. Some fear that these 
things involve loss of individuality. To them 
the scientist says, "Your dream of bodily individ- 
uality is absurd. The substance of which the 
farthest sun is composed and the substance of 
which your body is composed is the same. Forms 
are simply so many aggregations of particles, dif- 
ferentiated only by Space. Into One Imperish- 



Concerning the Eternal Omnipresent Self 301 

able Essence, and into One All-Permeating Life 
all forms and forces are reducible." To them 
the psychologist will say, "All differentiations of 
consciousness, all modification of thought and 
emotion are simply so many manifestations of 
One Infinite Background of Intelligence and Con- 
sciousness through which this universe exists, and 
exists as differentiated, and as many." Thus in- 
dividuality of body, of life, of consciousness, of 
intelligence, as understood by many of us, is un- 
real. Through scientific ignorance many of us 
fail to realize the Unity of Life and the Unity 
of Matter. It exists however, as certainly as 
the rotation of the earth and the ether which 
presses against the surface of the earth millions 
of pounds to the square inch. We do not sense 
these things in daily life, but science and mathe- 
matics have proved them for us. As certainly as 
these things are true is the declaration of the 
Spirit true that the Substance, the Force, the Life 
and the Intelligence of the scientists are simply so 
many modifications of One, Beginningless, Cause- 
less, Endless Essence. It is of neither gender. 
As It is the Self of All, the thinkers of India 
have called it Self or Brahman. In referring to 
It they use the pronouns "It" and "That." For 
the sake of simplicity, however, they frequently 
use the masculine pronouns. They say that this 



302 Practical Occultism 

is the Impersonal Spirit which has been person- 
alized and worshipped under such names as Je- 
hovah, Father, Jupiter, Ahuramazda, Ra, Gitchee 
Manito, and so forth. To the mystics of the 
world even this universe is that Self. They say 
that Spirit is the cause, and world is the effect. 
They say that therefore they are the same. 
Karya-karanabheda. They illustrate this for in- 
stance by saying that if we do not view the thing 
called cloth as such, but only as it is composed 
of its cause — threads running lengthwise and 
crosswise — it can be seen that the Reality even 
of cloth is Spirit. For the threads are composed 
"of threads still finer, and these, in turn, of still 
finer threads, and so on and so on until finally 
we come to the most infinitesimal part of 
threads perceptible. These, they say, are iden- 
tical with their ultimate essence, color vibrations, 
these with the air, the air with the ether, the 
ether with Brahman or Spirit. When asked what 
is real in this world, they invariably reply Spirit, 
because everything can be ultimately identified 
with It. 

These ideas were the meaning of Jesus the 
Christ's words when he said: "I and my Father 
are One." He saw but One Individual. "Thou 
art That," say the Vedas. Try and grasp these 
thoughts. Your life will be changed. When 



Concerning the Eternal Omnipresent Self 303 

you realize them, your lower nature, purified from 
Desire and Worldliness, will merge with the 
ecstasy of perfected sages into that One Infinite 
Self — the Divine within — which is the Self of all 
living Beings. "He is our mother; He is our 
father; He is our beloved friend; He is our 
wealth and learning; He is also the shadow dark- 
ening our path." Whom then shall we hate; 
whom shall we fear? Everything is Self, our 
Self. Everything seen, everything heard, every- 
thing felt and imagined become transformed by 
our vision of Self. Through soul ignorance we 
divide the One Self into many. When the veils 
of ignorance and separateness are removed "by 
the grace of the Creator, then the mortal becomes 
Immortal, all doubts vanish," and the soul finds 
that through its indefinite incarnations and chang- 
ing personalities, there has at all times dwelt in 
its innermost sanctuary the Self. This eternal 
Self knows no separateness. It is above all limi- 
tations. Through His own power of Maya (illu- 
sion), and for His own inscrutable reasons, the 
Lord from time to time projects Himself in this 
universe with its seeming difference, separate- 
ness and manifoldness. He likewise causes it to 
involve and become only potential. Similar to 
the fire which has a potential existence in every 
piece of wood, so when the "night of Brahma" 



304 Practical Occultism 

arrives, when the cosmic force which has pro- 
jected these universes has been spent, they will 
merge into a potential existence in the All-absorb- 
ing Spirit. This is the great cosmic rest, the equi- 
librium of science. These things about us which 
our senses tell us are so real and solid, will then 
gradually fade into states less solid, becoming dis- 
integrated and invisible in the expanse of the 
ether, and finally reduced to a static condition. 
Forms, forces, space, ether, time, the law of cause 
and effect, all these worlds will have vanished. 
We are prepared for this dissolution of objective 
re.ality by the dissolution we daily witness about 
us. From the invisible, bodies are projected and 
into the invisible they disappear. Nothing which 
is truly real can ever change. It would be hard 
therefore, to logically call this world of constant 
change, of passing things, of illusion, real. The 
Spirit of it is eternally the same. It is with us 
now, interpenetrating every atom. It does not 
only permeate every atom, but It is likewise the 
reality, the manifesting power of every atom, the 
reality of our thoughts, the reality of our senses 
and their experiences, nay even of our very souls. 
There is nothing but It. It is Self Universal. 
When we have realized That, for us there is no 
death, no change, no relativity, no coming and 
going, no subjection to this desire and that — for 



Concerning the Eternal Omnipresent Self 305 

what should we want having That which is all? 
There will then be no reincarnation, for the Spirit 
in the man will then shine forth. It knows Itself 
as Spirit, as Unborn, Ancient, Everlasting, free 
from birth and death. The body is born and 
dies; the mind changes perpetually. But the 
Spirit is not born, neither does it die or change. 
It has no need for incarnation, for what should 
It desire; what should It become? It is all in all. 
It is the worshipper and what is worshipped. 
Where is the place It is not? What is there be- 
side It? It is the lowest and the highest. Noth- 
ing exists outside of Its All-embracing Existence. 
It knows nothing of the distinctions man makes 
through ignorance, through fear, through passion, 
through envy, through selfishness, through lack 
of discrimination between the real and the unreal. 
It can see no difference between the highest God 
and the most miserable creature. It sees only 
a difference of manifestation for It is the Spirit, 
the Reality of that God and that creature. It 
knows Itself, only as Itself. 

It — the Spirit — is unsearchable by any methods. 
It is imperceptible by the senses. The mind can- 
not grasp It; it can only reason the necessity of 
Its absolute existence. It is the unthinkable. It 
is Spencer's Unknowable. No argument will 
avail. How then can It be realized? "He 



306 Practical Occultism 

whom the Self chooses, by him the Self is gained," 
the Vedas declare. The Spirit in us realises ex- 
ternal, objective knowledge through the senses 
and through the intellect. But these means of 
knowledge are included in this universal net of 
illusion. How then can the Imperishable Spirit 
be discerned? The third means of knowledge 
possessed by the Spirit is the illumination It mani- 
fests when the heart is pure, when the senses 
through self-control are dormant, when the in- 
tellect has ceased to wander in vain argument — in 
other words when Raja Yoga, union with the 
Divine Self, has been effected. It realizes that 
wnat the senses and the mind had perceived as 
different is one in Essence with Itself. It sees 
that It is both Subject and Object; that Infinite 
Knowledge and Infinite Being are One. It knows 
Itself as that Brahman, that Spirit, that Divine 
Being, that Unconditioned Self, that World-Soul 
which is Existence, Knowledge, Bliss-Absolute. 
Its essence is Immeasurable Love. 

The paths which lead to this Supreme Goal are 
numerous. Do not think the Lord has inclosed 
His infinite love and mercies within the narrow 
boundaries of any one system of thought, ethics 
or religion. Away from "the oldness of the let- 
ter," as St. Paul says. The Lord permeates all 
religions. The form, the doxology, the symbol- 



Concerning the Eternal Omnipresent Self 307 

ogy of a religion, its liturgy, and so forth, are 
the outgrowth of religious need varying at dif- 
ferent periods of the race's development. The 
Lord has given the nations of antiquity, the 
Chinese, the pre-Aryan races, a chance for reali- 
zation even as He has given us teachings in His 
incarnation as the Christ. This fact should make 
us impartial when dealing with the spirit of a 
religion. We should not condemn. Objection- 
able forms of religion perish along the line of 
least resistance, while the survival of the fittest 
is obtained. Evolution works here similarly as 
it does everywhere, in displacements and readjust- 
ments. We should always remember that the 
form of a religion is nothing, and that its Spirit 
is everything. All forms vanish when the Spirit 
has been attained. They are only a means to an 
end — realization of Self. This is the goal of re- 
ligion. It is religion in the highest sense. For 
souls such as the Christ, the Buddha, St. Francis 
of Assissi, St. Theresa of Jesus, and other great 
souls who have realized Self and communed with 
the Divine, what use is there for rituals, particu- 
lar places of worship, prescribed rules, bibles, 
and so forth? They are, as the apostle says, 
"living temples of the Holy Ghost (Spirit). " 
They are one with the Source of all Truth and 
Holiness. 



308 Practical Occultism 

The first and indispensable requisite for reali- 
zation is a sincere desire. This desire should 
not be the haphazard result of a passing emotion. 
It should be real. Sri Ramakrishna, India's 
latest incarnation of the Supreme, telling his fol- 
lowers of this desire, likened it to the desire of 
the drowning man to be rescued from imminent 
death. When the desire is that sincere then you 
will see the Lord; you will know, "I and My 
Father are One"; you will attain realization. 
All religious aspirants have felt this desire. The 
mind, also, should know nothing but good. It 
should reflect nothing but the Spirit. It should 
radiate purity. Christ Himself said: "Blessed 
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." 
When Jesus the Christ used the word see he 
meant what was implied. He was not guilty of 
double-meanings. Grasp the promise. With 
this mental attitude, with this first step towards 
the Goal, the sorrows of life, its bodily cares and 
anxieties will be forgotten. An emotion akin to 
ecstasy will be the condition of the soul. The 
soul will unswervingly witness the All-Presence, 
the Infinite Bliss of the Master. 



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